Papers by Letizia Lorusso
Frailty and Sarcopenia - Recent Evidence and New Perspectives, 2021
Sarcopenia is an important recently defined disease affecting people aged ≥65 years all over the ... more Sarcopenia is an important recently defined disease affecting people aged ≥65 years all over the world. Improving the assessment of loss of muscle mass is becoming mandatory. In this regard, various new technologies have been advanced. Although the gold standard is represented by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) or magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS), computed tomography (CT) or dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA), followed by biological impedance analysis (BIA) compared with DXA, there are numerous correlations between sarcopenia and health domain of everyday life that must be investigated and addressed, trying to obtain the best possible outcome in the older population. In this review, we focused on all types of new technologies assessing loss of muscle mass, frailty, independence, walking, capacity to get dressed, and loss of balance or sleepiness in older people and that could improve the diagnosis of sarcopenia or the rehabilitation of sarcopenic patients to prevent possib...
Translational Medicine @ UniSa, 2020
Nowadays, researchers and clinicians are increasingly interested in alternative non-pharmacologic... more Nowadays, researchers and clinicians are increasingly interested in alternative non-pharmacological treatments, and music therapy seems to have additional and powerful effects on different pathologies and pain. However, since pain is a subjective perception, it is difficult to evaluate if and which effect music has on it. In this study, a new device and method have been introduced to objectively estimate pain threshold and its changes related to external stimuli. The above-mentioned device, called autoalgometer, allows to evaluate pain threshold changes while listening to music or other sounds. In this experiment, the pain threshold was evaluated in twenty-seven volunteers after listening to one out of three different soundtracks: white noise, Mozart’s sonata K448 or Brian Eno’s ambient music. Compared to staying in silence, listening to the recordings had no significant effect on pain threshold, and the results did not show any significant difference between the experimental groups...
Journal of clinical medicine, Jan 12, 2018
The term "pain threshold" refers to the measurement of the intensity of a physical stim... more The term "pain threshold" refers to the measurement of the intensity of a physical stimulus that evokes pain. To estimate the pain threshold, a mechanical or electrical stimulus with increasing intensity is usually applied until the subject under evaluation refers to a pain sensation. This study aims to evaluate the autoalgometric pain threshold as a perfect technique to determine the effects of stimulation rate in relation to both gender and the site of stimulation. In this experimental model, pressure algometry was applied: the subject under evaluation pushed a finger against a small round metal tip, producing and at the same time controlling the intensity of the noxious stimulus. Through autoalgometry, the stimulus intensity was recorded over time, measuring the force change rate applied and studying the subject's behavior on approaching pain. This test was performed with 50 healthy volunteers on two days, applying a fast or slow rate of stimulation. The results des...
BMC Neuroscience, 2017
Recent studies have demonstrated the capacity of hippocampal sequences associated with theta osci... more Recent studies have demonstrated the capacity of hippocampal sequences associated with theta oscillation, to encode P160 The effect of progressive degradation of connectivity between brain areas on the brain network structure
Italian journal of anatomy and embryology, 2014
Antonio Maria Valsalva (1666–1723) wrote the first modern anatomical description of the human ear... more Antonio Maria Valsalva (1666–1723) wrote the first modern anatomical description of the human ear and in 1717 published the Aura Humanus Tractatus, where he describes the treatment of toothache by scarification of antitragus. Auriculotherapy (AT) is a diagnostic and treatment method based on normalizing the body’s dysfunction through stimulation of definite points on the ear. Stimulation of a reflex point in the ear seems relieve symptoms of distant pathologies (Gori et al 2007). AT is a treatment diffusing in all over the world, and its patterns follow the principles of Chinese acupuncture, revised and updated, with Chinese and French maps of the ear; the principles of Paul Nogier (the father of Western AT) and also the principles of reflexology basing on somatotopic maps that do not recognize energetic-based stimulation, while just the evocation of a reflex stimulating precise areas of the ear. Today are used for stimulation of ear skin many different tools: finger acupressure, laser, electricity, different types of needles, magnetic balls and seeds (Nogier 1983). In our experiments AT involved the placement of vaccaria seeds on one ear, with two minute pressure and no further manipulation by the patient. The ear point used were fingers, from the French and Chinese charts. Two groups of healthy volunteers (n. = 6 for each group), 19-25 years old, participated to the study. Each subject was asked to perform an auto-algometric test (Viggiano et al., 2009) on three occasions: before, 1 hour after auricolotherapy (or sham-therapy) and 24 hours after auricolotherapy (or sham-therapy). Participants of the first group received a 2 min long session of auricolotherapy, while participants of the second group received a 2 min long session of sham-therapy, consisting of a puncture/massage above the skin of the neck. The auto-algometric test consisted of applying the subject themselves an increasing pressure with the fingertips and finger-backs of four fingers (i.e. eight sites were evaluated) against a round-shaped needle of 1 mm in diameter for two times: until a minimum pain sensation (first time, minimal test) or a maximally tolerable pain sensation were evoked (second time, maximal test). The results showed a significant greater pain threshold in the maximal test at 24 hours after the auricolotherapy compared to sham-therapy. This result indicates that auricolotherapy can increase pain tolerability, rather than affecting the minimal pain threshold.
Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine, 2015
The objective of our study was to investigate if auriculotherapy (AT) can modulate pain threshold... more The objective of our study was to investigate if auriculotherapy (AT) can modulate pain threshold. In our experiments, AT consisted of placingVaccariaseeds over the “fingers point” of one ear. Two groups of healthy volunteers were enrolled for the study. Each subject was asked to perform an autoalgometric test developed by our group on three occasions: before, 1 hour after, AT and 24 hours after AT. Participants of the first group received a 2-minute long session of AT, while participants of the second group received a 2-minute long session of sham treatment, consisting of a puncture/massage above the skin of the neck. The autoalgometric test consisted of applying an increasing pressure with the finger-tips and finger-backs of four fingers by the subjects themselves (i.e., eight sites were evaluated) against a round-shaped needle for two times: until a minimum pain sensation (first time, minimal test) or a maximally tolerable pain sensation (second time, maximal test). Our results s...
Neuroscience, 2015
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Papers by Letizia Lorusso