0000000001153866
AUTHOR
Tedeschi Gioacchino
Disease-Modifying Therapies and Coronavirus Disease 2019 Severity in Multiple Sclerosis
Objective: This study was undertaken to assess the impact of immunosuppressive and immunomodulatory therapies on the severity of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in people with multiple sclerosis (PwMS). Methods: We retrospectively collected data of PwMS with suspected or confirmed COVID-19. All the patients had complete follow-up to death or recovery. Severe COVID-19 was defined by a 3-level variable: mild disease not requiring hospitalization versus pneumonia or hospitalization versus intensive care unit (ICU) admission or death. We evaluated baseline characteristics and MS therapies associated with severe COVID-19 by multivariate and propensity score (PS)-weighted ordinal logistic mod…
C9ORF72 hexanucleotide repeat expansions in the Italian sporadic ALS population.
It has been recently reported that a large proportion of patients with familial amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (familial ALS) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD) are associated with a hexanucleotide (GGGGCC) repeat expansion in the first intron of C9ORF72. We have assessed 1,757 Italian sporadic ALS cases, 133 from Sardinia, 101 from Sicily, and 1,523 from mainland Italy. Sixty (3.7%) of 1,624 mainland Italians and Sicilians and 9 (6.8%) of the 133 Sardinian sporadic ALS cases carried the pathogenic repeat expansion. None of the 619 regionally-matched control samples (1,238 chromosomes) carried the expansion. Twenty-five cases (36.2%) had behavioral FTD in addition to ALS. FTD or unspecified d…