Impact of COVID-19 lockdown on symptoms in patients with functional gastrointestinal disorders: Relationship with anxiety and perceived stress

Background: Psychological stress and anxiety, such those generated by forced quarantine, affect gastrointestinal symptoms course in patients with functional gastrointestinal disorders. Thus, our aim was to assess, in a cohort of patients regularly followed up in a devoted outpatient clinic of Southern Italy, the association between their gastrointestinal symptoms changes, stress, and anxiety reported during the Italian lockdown. Methods: We recruited patients from the outpatient clinic of the University of Salerno, devoted to functional gastrointestinal disorders, selecting only patients for whom an evaluation was available in the last 6 months before the lockdown. Gastrointestinal symptoms were evaluated at each visit through standardized questionnaire and pooled in a database. On 45th days from the beginning of the lockdown, patients were re-assessed by phone with the same questionnaire. Anxiety and stress levels were assessed through a self-administered online questionnaire based on Generalized Anxiety Disorder 7 test and Perceived Stress Scale 10 test. Key Results: The intensity-frequency scores of several upper gastrointestinal symptoms improved (Wilcoxon test <0.05). Higher anxiety levels had a higher risk of worsening chest pain (OR 1.3 [1.1–1.7]), waterbrash (OR 1.3 [1.0–1.7]), epigastric burning (OR 1.3 [1.0–1.6]), and abdominal pain (OR 1.6 [1.0–2.3]). When compared to the interval preceding the outbreak, half of the patients declared their symptoms remained unchanged, 13.6% worsened, and 36.4% improved. Conclusions and Inferences: During the COVID-19 quarantine, there was an improvement of the majority of upper gastrointestinal symptoms in our patients, and anxiety seems an important risk of worsening few of them

CENTRO INTERISTITUZIONALE DI RICERCA ED ELABORAZIONE DIDATTICA CIRED Il laboratorio di Progettazione didattica di Lingue

Laboratori di progettazione sperimentazione CIRED (Centro Interistituzionale di Ricerca ed elaborazione didattica) insegnamento/apprendimento Lingue stranier

Mass Spectrometric Quantification of Asparagine Synthetase in Circulating Leukemia Cells From Acute lymphoblastic Leukemia Patients

The appearance of asparaginase-resistant acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) in transformed cell lines has been correlated with increased expression of asparagine synthetase (ASNS). Recent measurements using mRNA-based assays have raised doubts, however, as to the importance of ASNS protein in the cellular mechanisms that confer drug resistance upon the leukemic cells. Studies aimed at determining the concentration of ASNS protein in human leukemias are therefore needed to resolve this issue. A mass spectrometry (MS)-based procedure is presented for the direct quantification of ASNS protein concentration in complex sample mixtures. This assay is able to distinguish samples from transformed cell lines that express ASNS over a wide dynamic range of concentration. Importantly, this method directly detects ASNS protein, the functional entity that may be synthesizing sufficient asparagine to render leukemia cells resistant to asparaginase-treatment. We also report the successful use of this MS method, which has lower limits of detection and quantification of 30 and 100 attomoles, respectively, for the first direct measurements of ASNS protein concentrations in four patient blast samples