Papers by Giovanni Maria Casella
Archives of Iranian medicine
Celiac disease (CD) may have a variety of different presentations. This study has aimed to explor... more Celiac disease (CD) may have a variety of different presentations. This study has aimed to explore the prevalence of gastrointestinal (GI) and non-GI symptoms in patients with CD according to data collected in Italy and Romania (Europe) and Iran (Middle East). This is a retrospective cross-sectional study conducted in Iran, Romania and Italy with data collection during the period from May 2009 - May 2011. For each center we included only patients with CD that was confirmed by endoscopy, small bowel biopsies and positive serology. GI symptoms such as abdominal pain, diarrhea, constipation, nausea and vomiting, weight loss and flatulence, as well as additional signs and symptoms of iron deficiency anemia (IDA), osteoporosis, hypertransaminasemia, and other related abnormalities were collected. Overall, 323 women and 127 men, whose mean age at diagnosis was 34.2 ± 16.47 years were included in this study. Of these, 157 subjects (34.9%) reported at least one GI symptom. The majority of c...
Nutrients
Background: Histological changes induced by gluten in the duodenal mucosa of patients with non-co... more Background: Histological changes induced by gluten in the duodenal mucosa of patients with non-coeliac gluten sensitivity (NCGS) are poorly defined. Objectives: To evaluate the structural and inflammatory features of NCGS compared to controls and coeliac disease (CeD) with milder enteropathy (Marsh I-II). Methods: Well-oriented biopsies of 262 control cases with normal gastroscopy and histologic findings, 261 CeD, and 175 NCGS biopsies from 9 contributing countries were examined. Villus height (VH, in μm), crypt depth (CrD, in μm), villus-to-crypt ratios (VCR), IELs (intraepithelial lymphocytes/100 enterocytes), and other relevant histological, serologic, and demographic parameters were quantified. Results: The median VH in NCGS was significantly shorter (600, IQR: 400–705) than controls (900, IQR: 667–1112) (p < 0.001). NCGS patients with Marsh I-II had similar VH and VCR to CeD [465 µm (IQR: 390–620) vs. 427 µm (IQR: 348–569, p = 0·176)]. The VCR in NCGS with Marsh 0 was lower ...
Gastroenterology and Hepatology From Bed to Bench, 2016
Celiac disease (CD) shows an increased prevalence in female, particularly during the fertile peri... more Celiac disease (CD) shows an increased prevalence in female, particularly during the fertile period. Celiac disease should be researched in infertility, spontaneous and recurrent abortions, delayed menarche, amenorrhea, early menopause, and children with low birth-weight. Celiac disease is still little considered during the evaluation of infertility. Up to 50% of women with untreated CD refer an experience of miscarriage or an unfavorable outcome of pregnancy. Celiac patients taking a normal diet (with gluten) have a shorter reproductive period. Women with undiagnosed CD had a higher risk of small for gestation age infants very small for gestational age infants and pre-term birth when compared with women with noted CD. The link between NCGS and infertility is actually unknown. The goal of our work is to perform an actual review about this topic and to increase the awareness in the medical population to research celiac disease in selected obstetric and gynecological disorders.
Gastrointestinal Disorders, 2020
Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is an immune-mediated disease, which often require lifetime trea... more Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is an immune-mediated disease, which often require lifetime treatment with immunomodulators and immunosuppressive drugs. Both IBD and its treatments are associated with an increased risk of infectious disease and mortality. Several of these diseases are vaccine preventable and could be avoided, reducing morbidity and mortality. However, vaccination rates among patients with IBD are lower than in the general population and both patients and doctors are not fully aware of the problem. Education campaigns and well planned vaccination schemes are necessary to improve vaccination coverage in patients with IBD. Immunomodulators and immunosuppressive drugs may reduce the seroprotection levels. For this reason, new vaccination schemes are being studied in patients with IBD. It is therefore important to understand which and when vaccines can be administrated based on immunocompetence or immunosuppression of patients. Usually, live-attenuated vaccines should b...
European Journal of Gastroenterology & Hepatology, 2004
In this paper we present AgentSketch, an agentbased system for on-line recognition of hand-drawn ... more In this paper we present AgentSketch, an agentbased system for on-line recognition of hand-drawn diagrams. Agents are used for managing the activity of symbol recognizers and for providing efficient interpretations of the sketch to the user thanks to the use of contextual information for ambiguity resolution. The system can be applied to a variety of domains by providing recognizers of the symbols in that domain. A first experimental evaluation has been performed on the domain of UML use case diagrams to verify the effectiveness of the proposed approach.
Journal of Visual Languages & Computing, 2008
Recognizing hand-sketched symbols is a definitely complex problem. The input drawings are often i... more Recognizing hand-sketched symbols is a definitely complex problem. The input drawings are often intrinsically ambiguous, and require context to be interpreted in a correct way. Many existing sketch recognition systems avoid this problem by recognizing single segments or simple geometric shapes in a stroke. However, for a recognition system to be effective and precise, context must be exploited, and both the simplifications on the sketch features, and the constraints under which recognition may take place, must be reduced to the minimum. In this paper, we present an agent-based framework for sketched symbol interpretation that heavily exploits contextual information for ambiguity resolution. Agents manage the activity of lowlevel hand-drawn symbol recognizers, that may be heterogeneous for better adapting to the characteristics of each symbol to be recognized, and coordinate themselves in order to exchange contextual information, thus leading to an efficient and precise interpretation of sketches. We also present AgentSketch, a multi-domain sketch recognition system implemented according to the proposed framework. A first experimental evaluation has been performed on the domain of UML Use Case Diagrams to verify the effectiveness of the proposed approach.
International Journal of Agent-Oriented Software Engineering, 2007
This paper describes West2East, a computer-aided Agent-Oriented Software Engineering (AOSE) toolk... more This paper describes West2East, a computer-aided Agent-Oriented Software Engineering (AOSE) toolkit aimed at supporting the implementation of Multiagent Systems (MASs). West2East exploits languages for Web Services (WSs) for sharing Agent Interaction Protocols (AIPs), modelled using AUML, across the web, and Computational Logic to reason about them. In particular, West2East offers libraries for the translation of AIPs represented in AUML into 1) a textual notation proposed by Winikoff; 2) an XML notation proposed by ourselves; 3) a couple of WS-BPEL and WSDL documents; and 4) a Prolog term. It also offers 5) a mechanism for allowing agents that read a published AIP to reason about it before engaging in a dialogue with its publisher, and 6) libraries for the automatic generation of an executable program compliant with the original interaction protocol.
We present an approach based on web services, for building open and dynamic agent societies aimed... more We present an approach based on web services, for building open and dynamic agent societies aimed at hand-drawn sketch recognition. The approach exploits ontologies to enable agents to agree on message semantics and service purposes, standard web services languages to represent agent interaction protocols in a suitable way to be exchanged and handled by agents and web services to expose low-level recognition services. The communication mechanisms that characterize our approach, as well as the modular architecture allow agent societies to self-organize at run time, for gaining the capability of recognizing new domain languages, thus obtaining new flexible sketch-based applications.
In the last two decades, one new technology, that of agent-based systems, and one emerging resear... more In the last two decades, one new technology, that of agent-based systems, and one emerging research discipline, that of on-line recognition of hand-drawn diagrams, have gained wide attention and consensus. Since the application of the agent technology to disciplines where, traditionally, more standard approaches are adopted, usually leads to valuable and interesting results, we propose an agent-based system for on-line recognition of hand-drawn diagrams. In our system, agents are used 1) to manage the activity of parsers implemented according to the grammar formalism of Sketch Grammars, 2) to coordinate themselves in order to provide efficient and precise interpretations of the sketch to the user, and 3) to solve ambiguities by exploiting contextual information.
Archives of Neuroscience, 2017
Cerebellar ataxia (CA) is one of the most frequent neurological manifestations related to celiac ... more Cerebellar ataxia (CA) is one of the most frequent neurological manifestations related to celiac disease (CD). Celiac disease is found in patients with a percentage ranging from 1.9% to 16.7%. Gluten cerebellar ataxia is purely cerebellar and involves the entire cerebellum. The clinical signs of CA are gait ataxia, limb ataxia, dysarthria, pyramidal signs, altered eyes motions, and progressive impairment of stability, and erect position. The patients affected by Gluten CA show an immunological response against a primarily brain expressed TG, such as TG6. The prolonged gluten consumption in patients with gluten ataxia leads to a progressive loss of purkinje cells in the cerebellum. An early diagnosis of CA and gluten related disorders (GRD) increases the possibility to improve the neurological process. Non celiac gluten sensitivity (NCGS) is defined by clinical evidence of improvement of symptoms following the introduction of GFD in the absence of enteropathy. The increased recognition of the whole spectrum of Gluten related disorders (GRD) is the best way to improve the time of the diagnosis and to avoid patients with neurological manifestation remaining untreated if duodenal biopsy does not reveal an enteropathy. Cerebellar Ataxia is equally responsive to GFD in CD and NCGS patients.
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Papers by Giovanni Maria Casella