Franco Lucchese

Headache and comorbidity in children and adolescents

Headache is one of the most common neurological symptom reported in childhood and adolescence, leading to high levels of school absences and being associated with several comorbid conditions, particularly in neurological, psychiatric and cardiovascular systems. Neurological and psychiatric disorders, that are associated with migraine, are mainly depression, anxiety disorders, epilepsy and sleep disorders, ADHD and Tourette syndrome. It also has been shown an association with atopic disease and cardiovascular disease, especially ischemic stroke and patent foramen ovale (PFO).

Brain dopamine receptor plasticity: testing a diathesis-stress hypothesis in an animal model

Abstract A wealth of clinical data supports a major role of genetic liability as well as of altered brain dopamine (DA) functioning in different types of behavioural disturbances. Genetic influence on behaviour involves multiple genes, rather than one or two major genes, as well as non-genetic sources of variance. Thus, in recent years, increasing attention has been devoted to the involvement of stressful experiences (life events) in the development and expression of psychopathology. Moreover, a diathesis-stress hypothesis has been proposed, which suggests that the environmental factors (stress) are not specific for a given pathology, whereas genetic factors (diathesis) are. Results obtained in an animal model offer support to this hypothesis. Indeed, mice of the C57BL/6 and DBA/2 inbred strains are equally susceptible to stress but develop different behavioural disturbances related to different alterations of brain DA receptors. Moreover, quantitative trait loci (QTL) associations in the C57 (B) × DBA (D) recombinant inbred (RI) strains indicate a number of provisional QTLs influencing the behavioural effect of stress. Finally, the results of this analysis suggest the involvement of regulatory factors related to stress response and neural or synaptic plasticity in the control of brain DA receptor plasticity.

Development of Micro-Grippers for Tissue and Cell Manipulation with Direct Morphological Comparison

Although tissue and cell manipulation nowadays is a common task in biomedical analysis, there are still many different ways to accomplish it, most of which are still not sufficiently general, inexpensive, accurate, efficient or effective. Several problems arise both for in vivo or in vitro analysis, such as the maximum overall size of the device and the gripper jaws (like in minimally-invasive open biopsy) or very limited manipulating capability, degrees of freedom or dexterity (like in tissues or cell-handling operations). This paper presents a new approach to tissue and cell manipulation, which employs a conceptually new conjugate surfaces flexure hinge (CSFH) silicon MEMS-based technology micro-gripper that solves most of the above-mentioned problems. The article describes all of the phases of the development, including topology conception, structural design, simulation, construction, actuation testing and in vitro observation. The latter phase deals with the assessment of the function capability, which consists of taking a series of in vitro images by optical microscopy. They offer a direct morphological comparison between the gripper and a variety of tissues.

Predictable stress promotes place preference and low mesoaccumbens dopamine response

Aversive stimuli that are signaled, and therefore predictable, are preferred to unsignaled ones and promote less severe stress-related disturbances. Since stressful events are known to activate mesoaccumbens dopamine (DA) transmission, in the present experiments, we evaluated possible differences in mesoaccumbens DA response to predictable and unpredictable footshocks. Mice of the inbred strain DBA/2 were trained for conditioned place preference (CPP) in shuttle boxes. The procedure promoted significant preference for the compartment previously paired with predictable shocks (PR) to that paired with unpredictable shocks (NP). Mesoaccumbens levels of DA and its metabolites were therefore evaluated either after the first or the last (third) training session. A significant increase of 3,4-dihydroxyphenylacetic acid (DOPAC) and homovanillic acid (HVA) levels were observed in animals exposed for the first time to the apparatus without shock delivery (SHAM) or to the PR and NP conditions compared with unhandled mice. There was no difference between PR and NP values, and DOPAC and HVA levels in both groups differed from those observable in the SHAM-exposed group. However, trained mice exposed to NP showed a significant elevation of DOPAC and HVA levels in comparison with those exposed to PR. These results show that information about predictability of aversive stimuli reduces central stress responses and suggest a possible relationship between reduced stressfulness and preference for predictable aversive experiences.

EFFECTS OF A SINGLE, SHORT INTRAVENOUS DOSE OF ACETYL-l-CARNITINE ON PATTERN-REVERSAL VISUAL-EVOKED POTENTIALS IN CIRRHOTIC PATIENTS WITH HEPATIC ENCEPHALOPATHY

1 In animals and in cultured neurons, l‐carnitine and acetyl‐l‐carnitine (ALCAR) have been shown to counteract some of the toxic effects of ammonia. In order to detect similar properties in humans, we studied neuronal function after ALCAR administration in cirrhotics with hepatic encephalopathy (HE). 2 Eighteen cirrhotic patients with persistent HE and hyperammonaemia were investigated in the present study and six subjects with a prior transient ischaemic attack were used as controls. 3 The prominent positive component that occurs approximately 100 msec after the pattern reversal (P100) latencies of visual‐evoked potentials were used to evaluate neuronal function. At first, the P100 latency was measured in six cirrhotic patients with HE and in the six controls before the administration of 0.5 g ALCAR in 50 mL isotonic saline (infusion rate 10 mL/min) and 15, 30, 60 and 90 min later. 4 A significant reduction in P100 latencies was identified 30 min after ALCAR infusion in HE patients, whereas no differences were observed in controls. 5 Thereafter, the P100 latency was evaluated in the 12 other cirrhotic patients with HE only before and 30 min after ALCAR infusion. The mean of the P100 latencies measured in these subjects was significantly shorter after ALCAR infusion compared with values obtained before ALCAR administration (mean (SD) 130.78 5.50 vs 136.08 6.45 msec, respectively; P = 0.0013). 6 The present study suggests that a single intravenous dose of ALCAR may transiently improve neuronal function in cirrhotic patients with persistent HE and hyperammonaemia.

Is the migrainous female brain different? Some new evidence

Migraine is a very widespread and debilitating disease and, according to the World Health Organization, one of the most common disorders of the nervous system. It is twice as common in females as in males (Le et al ., 2011), and much more prevalent in females over the age of 12 years (Lipton et al ., 2001). In fact, the picture of migraine differs by sex before and after puberty. Under the age of 12 years, boys have a slightly higher incidence of migraine. Thereafter, prevalence increases for both sexes, peaking between ages 35 and 45 years, with an increase in the female-to-male ratio from 2:1 at the age of 20 years to 3.3:1 at the age of 40 years (Lipton et al ., 2001). This higher prevalence in females than males is common in many other chronic pain conditions, although the mechanisms underlying this difference are still poorly understood. Indeed, current knowledge of migraine pathogenesis is based primarily on experimental studies conducted in male animals, and lack of migraine research in female animals limits the clinical relevance given the sex bias in humans. The disproportionate number of females of reproductive age with migraine suggests that hormonal factors may play a role, but the complex pathophysiology indicates that additional factors are likely to be involved. It is now well recognized that: (i) at puberty females begin to demonstrate an increase in migraine prevalence compared to males; (ii) >55% of females have menstrual-related migraine; and (iii) the majority of females show improvement in migraine frequency and/or severity with pregnancy and at the menopause. More recently, migraine research has begun to help expand our understanding of the mechanisms underlying these differences, and how they can impact on treatment choices. Several hypotheses have been proposed to explain these differences in migraine and other …

Sudden Infant Dead: Reaction to Bereavement in Siblings and Mothers

Background: This study aims to determine if surviving siblings of children who died from Sudden Infant Dead Syndrome (SIDS) had behavioural or psychological problems and if their mothers had suffered from alexithymia. Methods: We have enrolled 39 families (58 children). The “Mourning Group” (MG) consisted in 16 families (28 children) with following characteristics: 1) having an infant die from SIDS; 2) having at least one surviving child aged 6 to 18 years; 3) at least 8 years of mourning. The control group (CG) consisted of 23 families (30 children) free from any kind of mourning experiences. We used CBCL 6-18 questionnaire to assess behavioural and psychological problems on siblings, and TAS-20 in order to measure alexithymia in mothers. Results: Children in the MG compared with children in the CG presented a significantly higher score in CBCL on “social problems”, whilst reported a significantly lower score on “social competencies”. Mothers in the MG compared with mothers in the CG presented significantly lower scores in the externally oriented thinking (subscale F3 of TAS). A positive significant correlation emerged between time of bereavement and difficulty in identifying feelings (subscale F1). Conclusions: Our study confirms the presence of social difficulties in siblings born in families that experienced SIDS and shows that most of the mothers had long lasting difficulties in identifying their feelings.

Visual evoked potentials and heart rate during white noise stimulation

Visual evoked potentials (VEPs) were recorded in 12 adult participants as a function of the temporal frequency of a phase-reversed checkerboard, with or without a simultaneously presented white noise. During the VEP recordings also the pulse rate was measured. VEP amplitude changed as function of temporal frequency, but it was not affected by noise. Pulse rate was stable during the session without noise, but it increased during the white noise stimulation at high temporal frequencies. Heart acceleration might be associated to conditions when processing at low levels of visual sensitivity (high temporal frequencies) is furthermore disturbed by interfering stimulation (noise).