Antonella Marcoccia - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Antonella Marcoccia

Journal of Clinical Medicine

Impaired thyroid hormone availability during early pregnancy is associated with recurrent miscarr... more Impaired thyroid hormone availability during early pregnancy is associated with recurrent miscarriage (RM) and adverse pregnancy outcomes. The main cause of thyroid dysfunction is thyroid-related autoimmunity (TAI), characterized by a significantly higher serum level of thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH) compared to that of women without thyroid autoimmunity. TAI is associated with a significantly increased risk of miscarriage, and the incidence of TAI in women experiencing RM is higher compared to normal fertile women. In the present study, we have performed a retrospective analysis comparing the ability to conceive, the number of miscarriages and full-term pregnancies between 227 euthyroid women with autoimmune thyroid disease affected by RM and treated with levothyroxine (LT4) as adjuvant therapy, and a control group of 230 untreated women. We have observed a significant improvement of full-term pregnancies in treated women (59%) compared to untreated women (13%, p < 0.0001). C...

The Journal of Rheumatology

Thrombosis and Haemostasis

COVID-19 is also manifested with hypercoagulability, pulmonary intravascular coagulation, microan... more COVID-19 is also manifested with hypercoagulability, pulmonary intravascular coagulation, microangiopathy, and venous thromboembolism (VTE) or arterial thrombosis. Predisposing risk factors to severe COVID-19 are male sex, underlying cardiovascular disease, or cardiovascular risk factors including noncontrolled diabetes mellitus or arterial hypertension, obesity, and advanced age. The VAS-European Independent Foundation in Angiology/Vascular Medicine draws attention to patients with vascular disease (VD) and presents an integral strategy for the management of patients with VD or cardiovascular risk factors (VD-CVR) and COVID-19. VAS recommends (1) a COVID-19-oriented primary health care network for patients with VD-CVR for identification of patients with VD-CVR in the community and patients' education for disease symptoms, use of eHealth technology, adherence to the antithrombotic and vascular regulating treatments, and (2) close medical follow-up for efficacious control of VD p...

Italian Journal of Wound Care

Debridement is a key element of wound care. It involves the removal of devitalized tissue from th... more Debridement is a key element of wound care. It involves the removal of devitalized tissue from the wound bed in order to allow wound healing. Microcirculatory ulcers in general and scleroderma ulcers in particular are extremely painful, very reactive and rather unwilling to accept aggressive local treatments of a mechanical type or surgical cleaning which can promote an abnormal phlogistic response with a necrotizing evolution. For the elimination of devitalized tissue is necessary to promote autolytic or enzymatic debridement with slow tendency towards healing frequently exposed to phlogistic infections furthermore slowing healing with high risk of gangrene and amputation. Ultrasonic-assisted wound debridement uses low frequency ultrasound waves showing three clinical effects: atraumatic selective tissue debridement, wound stimulatory effect and antibacterial activity. We compare healing time, infections and procedural pain of ultrasonic debridement with autolytic debridement as fo...

Vasa

Summary. The term “microcirculation” refers to the terminal vascular network of the body, which i... more Summary. The term “microcirculation” refers to the terminal vascular network of the body, which includes arterioles, capillaries, venules as well as initial lymphatic vessels. Additionally, it insinuates to their unique function in thermoregulation, fluid balance, maintenance of cellular exchange, and metabolism. Disturbances of microvascular function were identified to precede macrovascular involvement in the presence of cardiovascular risk factors and is the hallmark of terminal disease stages like critical limb or acral ischemia. Nevertheless, despite its obvious significance in vascular medicine assessment of microvascular function became increasingly neglected in the clinical institutions during the last decades and seems to play a subordinary role in medical education. We therefore provide an overview over relevant and clinically practicable methods to assess microcirculation in vascular medicine with critical estimations of their pros and cons and their perspectives in the fu...

La Rivista Italiana della Medicina di Laboratorio - Italian Journal of Laboratory Medicine

Clinical Neurology and Neurosurgery, 2017

$Research paper thumbnail of The Concept of Early Systemic Sclerosis Following 2013 ACR\EULAR Criteria for the Classification of Systemic Sclerosis$

Current Rheumatology Reviews, 2014

For many years observational studies and clinical trials on systemic sclerosis (SSc) have been ca... more For many years observational studies and clinical trials on systemic sclerosis (SSc) have been carried out only on patients who met the 1980 American College of Rheumatology-ACR preliminary classification criteria. However, this lead to the exclusion from all those studies of subset patients, particularly those with a limited cutaneous SSc-sine scleroderma subset, because, despite a diagnosis of SSc based on Raynaud&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;#39;s phenomenon (RP) associated with digital pitting scars/ulcers, or by sclerodactyly and telangiectasia and/or typical esophagopathy and/or interstitial fibrosis detected by High Resolution Computed Tomography of the lungs, they did not satisfy the classification criteria. In that setting, LeRoy and Medsger proposed to label as affected by limited SSc (lSSc) or early SSc, cases presenting with RP associated with an SSc-type nailfold capillary pattern and/or SSc-selective autoantibodies. In 2008, Koenig et al. validated these criteria and proposed to name early SSc, or pre-scleroderma, patients with RP and either a scleroderma marker autoantibody or typical capillaroscopy abnormalities or both, who had been clearly shown to have high probabilities but not the certainty to develop definite SSc during a 20-year follow-up. This definition has been recently challenged by the development of the new ACR/EULAR criteria for the classification of SSc. At present, to be labeled as affected by early SSc, or pre-scleroderma, a patient should suffer from RP associated with either scleroderma marker autoantibodies or typical capillaroscopy findings and should not meet the 2013 ACR/EULAR criteria for the classification of SSc nor should he/she meet the criteria for SSc sine scleroderma.

Internal and emergency …, 2010

Dr. Picarelli: A 41-year-old woman, presenting with a long history of severe recurrent abdominal ... more Dr. Picarelli: A 41-year-old woman, presenting with a long history of severe recurrent abdominal pain, was admitted to our gastroenterology department. The pain was intermittent during the prior 4 years occurring at no set time of day or night. The abdominal pain was ...

European journal of …, 2006

Alessio Annovazzi1, Elena Bonanno2, Marcello Arca3, Calogero D'Alessandria1, Antonella Marco... more Alessio Annovazzi1, Elena Bonanno2, Marcello Arca3, Calogero D'Alessandria1, Antonella Marcoccia4, Luigi G. Spagnoli2, Francesco Violi4, Francesco Scopinaro1, Giorgio De Toma5, Alberto Signore1, 6, 7 1 Nuclear Medicine, 2nd Faculty of Medicine, University La ...

Arthritis Care & Research, 2014

To investigate whether patients affected by 1 of the 3 subsets of early systemic sclerosis (SSc; ... more To investigate whether patients affected by 1 of the 3 subsets of early systemic sclerosis (SSc; scleroderma), i.e., subset I, Raynaud&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;#39;s phenomenon with SSc marker autoantibodies and typical capillaroscopic findings; subset II, autoantibody positive only; and subset III, capillaroscopy positive only and not satisfying the 2013 American College of Rheumatology (ACR)/European League Against Rheumatism (EULAR) classification criteria for SSc at admission, differ from each other in the time to satisfy the criteria. Early SSc patients subdivided into the 3 subsets indicated above consecutively admitted to a rheumatology/angiology center were monitored for 12-102 months (median 36 months). Patients were reevaluated twice yearly to assess whether and when each patient satisfied the new ACR/EULAR classification criteria for SSc. Patients with undifferentiated connective tissue disease (UCTD) served as the comparator group. During followup, 11 (52.3%) of 21 subset I, 10 (66.6%) of 15 subset II, 0 of 24 subset III, and 0 of 44 UCTD patients satisfied the criteria (P = 0.0001). The difference was significant between early SSc and UCTD patients (P = 0.0001) and, within the group of early SSc patients, between each of the 2 autoantibody-positive subsets (subsets I and II) and the capillaroscopic-positive/autoantibody-negative subset (subset I versus III: P = 0.0001; subset II versus III: P = 0.0009). There was no difference between the 2 autoantibody-positive subsets (P = 0.454). In addition to marker autoantibody positivity, preclinical lung or heart involvement was associated with an increased risk to satisfy the criteria during followup. Our data demonstrated faster progression of SSc in autoantibody-positive patients, particularly in those with preclinical internal organ involvement at baseline, than in autoantibody-negative patients.

… of haemostasis and …, 2002

Moderate consumption of wine is associated with reduced cardiovascular events, but the mechanism ... more Moderate consumption of wine is associated with reduced cardiovascular events, but the mechanism is not fully elucidated. Aim of the study was to seek if con-sumption of red or white wine ,that are known to have different amount of polyphenols, differently influenced ...

European Respiratory Journal, 2016

Multidisciplinary Respiratory Medicine, 2011

We present a case of severe interstitial pneumonitis, mild polyarthritis and polymyositis, and Ra... more We present a case of severe interstitial pneumonitis, mild polyarthritis and polymyositis, and Raynaud&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;#39;s syndrome with the presence of anti-Jo-1 antibodies, which had been diagnosed as anti-synthetase syndrome. The presence, however, of anti-Ro/SSA antibodies led us to understand that we were dealing here with a more severe form of interstitial lung disease. The patient was treated for acute respiratory failure but he showed resistance to glucocorticoids and cyclosporine. Thus, he was treated with infusions of anti-CD20 therapy (rituximab): his clinical conditions improved very rapidly and a significant decrease in the activity of pulmonary disease was detected using high-resolution computerized tomography (HRCT) of the thorax and pulmonary function tests.

Atherosclerosis Supplements, 2007

Aims To investigate the existence of a relationship among flow-mediated dilation (FMD), nitric ox... more Aims To investigate the existence of a relationship among flow-mediated dilation (FMD), nitric oxide (NO), and oxidative stress in patients with peripheral arterial disease (PAD), and to assess if the administration of an antioxidant was able to improve arterial dilatation. Methods and results We performed a cross-sectional study comparing FMD, 8-Hydroxy-2-deoxy-2-deoxyguanosine (8-OHdG), a marker of oxidative stress, and nitrite/nitrate (NOx) serum levels in a population of 25 PAD patients and 40 controls. In the second part of the study, 21 PAD patients were randomly allocated to a treatment sequence of 7 days of i.v. infusion of placebo or 6 g/day propionyl-L-carnitine (PLC) in a cross-over design. Compared with controls, patients with PAD had enhanced 8-OHdG serum levels (2.4 + 1.2 vs. 4.24 + 3.11 ng/mL; P , 0.001), reduced NOx (17.02 + 6.11 vs. 11.28 + 6.02 mM; P , 0.001), and lowered FMD (10.34 + 2.14 vs. 6.69 + 2.95; P , 0.001).

European Heart Journal, 2006

Arterial dysfunction is a hallmark of early atherosclerosis; however, its behavior in patients wi... more Arterial dysfunction is a hallmark of early atherosclerosis; however, its behavior in patients with metabolic syndrome (MS) is still unclear. We investigated the role of oxidative stress on ischemia-induced flow-mediated dilatation (FMD) in patients with MS. FMD and oxidative stress, as assessed by serum levels of 8-hydroxy-2-deoxy-2-deoxyguanosine (8-OHdG), were studied in 18 MS and 30 control subjects. Thereafter, in the 18 MS patients, FMD was assessed after iv infusion of 1 g vitamin C or placebo in a randomized, double-blind, crossover design; serial blood samples were taken in peripheral circulation before and after FMD to analyze 8-OHdG. Compared to controls, MS patients had higher 8-OHdG (p b 0.001) and lower FMD (p b 0.001); 8-OHdG and FMD were inversely correlated (R = −0.74; p b 0.01). In MS patients, placebo administration did not change FMD, whereas vitamin C significantly enhanced it (p b 0.001). After placebo, ischemia-induced FMD was associated with a significant increase in 8-OHdG (p b 0.001), an effect that was counteracted by vitamin C. Vitamin C infusion was associated with an inverse correlation between the changes in FMD and oxidative stress (R = −0.67; p b 0.01). The present study shows that arterial dilatation is impaired and that enhanced oxidative stress may play a key role in patients with MS.

Current Drug Targets, 2003

Peripheral arterial disease (PAD) is an important manifestation of systemic atherosclerosis that ... more Peripheral arterial disease (PAD) is an important manifestation of systemic atherosclerosis that is characterized by obstruction of the arteries in the lower limbs. Experimental and epidemiological studies suggested a key role for oxidative stress in initiation and progression of the atherosclerotic process. The results of these studies provided a good basis for interventional trials with antioxidants, particularly with vitamin E, but the findings were conflicting. In this paper we review the observational and interventional studies with antioxidants, and ask whether vitamins supplementation should or should be not be recommended for PAD patients.