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Adherence to the Mediterranean diet (MedDiet) has long been associated with several health benefits, including a reduced risk of heart disease, diabetes, and obesity. The MedDiet is characterized by a high consumption of foods such as fruits, vegetables, whole grains, fish, and olive oil, along with a moderate intake of red meat and red wine with meals. Some studies report significant differences between men and women in susceptibility to obesity, with women at a higher prevalence of obesity than men. One unexplored aspect, however, concerns the sex difference in MedDiet adherence, which could be influenced by various factors, such as health perceptions, food preferences, and cultural influences. The aim of this study is to assess the effectiveness and impact of MedDiet adherence in men and women, with a focus on its influence on health and well-being, as well as its ability to promote sex equity in healthcare outcomes. Moreover, we aim to measure the overall health improvements in men and women participating in a MedDiet program, including changes in body composition and overall quality of life. This study highlights that the MedDiet is associated with more significant body weight loss in women, although their increase in MedDiet adherence was lower than in men. Trial registration: NCT01890070. Registered 24 June 2013.

Malignant transformation of T-cell progenitors causes T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (T-ALL), an aggressive childhood lymphoproliferative disorder. Activating mutations of Notch, Notch1 and Notch3, have been detected in T-ALL patients. In this study, we aimed to deeply characterize hyperactive Notch3-related pathways involved in T-cell dynamics within the thymus and bone marrow to propose these processes as an important step in facilitating the progression of T-ALL. We previously generated a transgenic T-ALL mouse model (N3-ICtg) demonstrating that aberrant Notch3 signaling affects early thymocyte maturation programs and leads to bone marrow infiltration by CD4 + CD8 + (DP) T cells that are notably, Notch3 high CXCR4 high . Newly, our in vivo results suggest that an anomalous immature thymocyte subpopulation, such as CD4 - CD8 - (DN) over-expressing CD3ɛ, but with low CXCR4 expression, dominates N3-ICtg thymus-resident DN subset in T-ALL progression. MicroRNAs might be of significance in T-ALL pathobiology, however, whether required for leukemia maintenance is not fully understood. The selection of specific DN subsets demonstrates the inverse correlation between CXCR4 expression and a panel of Notch3-deregulated miRNAs. Interestingly, we found that within DN thymocyte subset hyperactive Notch3 inhibits CXCR4 expression through the cooperative effects of miR-139-5p and miR-150-5p, thus impinging on thymocyte differentiation with accumulation of DNCD3ɛ + CXCR4 - cells. These data point out that deregulation of Notch3 in T-ALL, besides its role in sustaining dissemination of abnormal DP T cells, as we previously demonstrated, could play a role in selecting specific DN immature T cells within the thymus, thus impeding T cell development, to facilitate T-ALL progression inside the bone marrow., (© 2024. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited.)

Growing worldwide food demand with its environmental impacts requires a reshaping of food consumption. This study aims to evaluate the degree of Italian consumers' awareness of sustainability and whether protein alternatives to meat could be accepted. A cross-sectional survey was carried out on a group of 815 respondents, representative of the Italian adult population for geography, gender, and age, using multivariate analysis together with cluster analysis. Lack of awareness of the consequences of food choices on the environment was found in 45% of respondents, and 51% reduced their consumption of meat. Typical foods of the Mediterranean diet (84% legumes 82% eggs, and 77% fish) were selected as the preferred sources of protein to replace meat, while insects and insect-based products were less accepted (67%). The importance of meat is the latent factor that explains more than 50% of the common variance observed in the factor analysis. The cluster analysis confirmed the importance of meat for Italian consumers, emphasizing other aspects of the sustainability of food choices. Cluster 1 (25.6%) considered meat very important. Two out of five clusters (clusters 2 and 3, 38%) considered meat replaceable in the diet, and cluster 4 (31.3%) included meat consumers that were willing to be sustainable. Cluster 5 identifies the "unsustainable consumers" (5.7%). In conclusion, besides the perceived importance of meat, there is room for recommendations for its reduction by proposing alternative foods already present in the Mediterranean diet.

Introduction: Immunotherapy with checkpoint inhibitors is an efficient treatment for metastatic melanoma. Development of vitiligo upon immunotherapy represents a specific immune-related adverse event (irAE) diagnosed in 15% of patients and associated with a positive clinical response. Therefore, a detailed characterization of immune cells during vitiligo onset in melanoma patients would give insight into the immune mechanisms mediating both the irAE and the anti-tumor response., Methods: To better understand these aspects, we analyzed T cell subsets from peripheral blood of metastatic melanoma patients undergoing treatment with anti-programmed cell death protein (PD)-1 antibodies. To deeply characterize the antitumoral T cell response concomitant to vitiligo onset, we analyzed T cell content in skin biopsies collected from melanoma patients who developed vitiligo. Moreover, to further characterize T cells in vitiligo skin lesion of melanoma patients, we sequenced T cell receptor (TCR) of cells derived from biopsies of vitiligo and primary melanoma of the same patient., Results and Discussion: Stratification of patients for developing or not developing vitiligo during anti-PD-1 therapy revealed an association between blood reduction of CD8-mucosal associated invariant T (MAIT), T helper (h) 17, natural killer (NK) CD56 bright , and T regulatory (T-reg) cells and vitiligo onset. Consistently with the observed blood reduction of Th17 cells in melanoma patients developing vitiligo during immunotherapy, we found high amount of IL-17A expressing cells in the vitiligo skin biopsy, suggesting a possible migration of Th17 cells from the blood into the autoimmune lesion. Interestingly, except for a few cases, we found different TCR sequences between vitiligo and primary melanoma lesions. In contrast, shared TCR sequences were identified between vitiligo and metastatic tissues of the same patient. These data indicate that T cell response against normal melanocytes, which is involved in vitiligo onset, is not typically mediated by reactivation of specific T cell clones infiltrating primary melanoma but may be elicited by T cell clones targeting metastatic tissues. Altogether, our data indicate that anti-PD-1 therapy induces a de novo immune response, stimulated by the presence of metastatic cells, and composed of different T cell subtypes, which may trigger the development of vitiligo and the response against metastatic tumor., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2023 Carbone, Capone, Guercio, Reddel, Silvestris, Lulli, Ramondino, Peluso, Quintarelli, Volpe and Failla.)

Background: Volumetric Muscle Loss (VML), resulting from severe trauma or surgical ablation, is a pathological condition preventing myofibers regeneration, since skeletal muscle owns the remarkable ability to restore tissue damage, but only when limited in size. The current surgical therapies employed in the treatment of this pathology, which particularly affects military personnel, do not yet provide satisfactory results. For this reason, more innovative approaches must be sought, specifically skeletal muscle tissue engineering seems to highlight promising results obtained from preclinical studies in VML mouse model. Despite the great results obtained in rodents, translation into human needs a comparable animal model in terms of size, in order to validate the efficacy of the tissue engineering approach reconstructing larger muscle mass (human-like). In this work we aim to demonstrate the validity of a porcine model, that has underwent a surgical ablation of a large muscle area, as a VML damage model., Results: For this purpose, morphological, ultrasound, histological and fluorescence analyses were carried out on the scar tissue formed following the surgical ablation of the peroneus tertius muscle of Sus scrofa domesticus commonly called mini-pig. In particular, the replenishment of the damaged area, the macrophage infiltration and the vascularization at different time-points were evaluated up to the harvesting of the scar upon six months., Conclusion: Here we demonstrated that following VML damage, there is an extremely poor regenerative process in the swine muscle tissue, while the formation of fibrotic, scar tissue occurs. The analyses performed up to 180 days after the injury revealed the development of a stable, structured and cellularized tissue, provided with vessels and extracellular matrix acquiring the status of granulation tissue like in human., (© 2023. The Author(s).)

On 26 September 2022, the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft struck Dimorphos, a satellite of the asteroid 65803 Didymos 1 . Because it is a binary system, it is possible to determine how much the orbit of the satellite changed, as part of a test of what is necessary to deflect an asteroid that might threaten Earth with an impact. In nominal cases, pre-impact predictions of the orbital period reduction ranged from roughly 8.8 to 17 min (refs. 2,3 ). Here we report optical observations of Dimorphos before, during and after the impact, from a network of citizen scientists' telescopes across the world. We find a maximum brightening of 2.29 ± 0.14 mag on impact. Didymos fades back to its pre-impact brightness over the course of 23.7 ± 0.7 days. We estimate lower limits on the mass contained in the ejecta, which was 0.3-0.5% Dimorphos's mass depending on the dust size. We also observe a reddening of the ejecta on impact., (© 2023. The Author(s).)

This study aimed to describe the process of validation of a questionnaire assessing Italian consumers’ perception of food sustainability. The study has a multiphase design. Phase 1 consisted in translating and structuring the questionnaire. Phase 2 aimed at assessing the validity of the content by experts. Phase 3 consisted of a pilot study (n = 150) carried out to revise the questionnaire based on the reactions of consumers representing the target group of the assessment. The questionnaire showed adequate content validity for 11 out of 14 questions (>0.79) and S-CVI/Ave > 0.80. Cronbach’s alpha values ranged from 0.08 to 0.90. The construct with insufficient results (0.08) was changed because it failed to correlate with the rest of the questionnaire. The factor analysis permitted the identification of questions that needed improvement in terms of comprehensibility, elimination of redundancies, and repetitions. The validated questionnaire included 12 questions (71 response options); 3 sections were identified: food sustainability knowledge (4 questions-30 items); sources of proteins alternative to meat (3 questions-20 items); eating behaviors (5 questions-21 items). This study showed the importance of validation before the administration on a large scale of a questionnaire on a topic such as sustainability still lacking large support from consensus documents.