Victor Babeș University of Medicine and Pharmacy Timișoara

Circulating Endothelial Nitric Oxide Synthase on the First Postpartum Day: An Exploratory Cross-Sectional Study of Its Association with Maternal Age, Redox-Relevant Haematological and Lipid Markers, and Postnatal Depression Screening

(1) Background: Endothelial nitric oxide synthase (eNOS/NOS3), the main source of vascular nitric oxide (NO), generates superoxide instead of NO when oxidative stress uncouples it. Circulating eNOS in the early puerperium is uncharacterised. (2) Methods:In a single-centre cross-s...

Sex-Related Differences in Clinical Characteristics and Outcomes Among Patients Clinically Managed for Suspected Bacterial Infection in the Emergency Department

Background and Objectives: Suspected bacterial infection is one of the leading presentations to the Emergency Department (ED) and is still associated with considerable morbidity and mortality. There is increasing evidence that biological sex may influence host immune responses, d...

Salivary Inflammatory Mediators and a Tongue-Coating Dysbiosis Index as Mechanistic Correlates of Adjunctive Halitosis Therapy: A Randomized Pragmatic Trial

Background: Intra-oral halitosis is sustained by tongue-coating biofilm, but ecological and host inflammatory responses to adjunctive therapy remain unclear. Methods: In a 4-week randomized pragmatic trial (117 adults; 39 per arm; ClinicalTrials.gov NCT05876321), we compared stan...

Mast cells - key players of digestive tumors associated angiogenesis.

INTRODUCTION: Mast cells (MCs) are immune cells derived from hematopoietic cluster of differentiation (CD)34+ and CD117+ precursors that complete their maturation in peripheral tissues such as the connective and mucosal layers, perivascular and perineural regions, and secondary l...

Epidemiological Assessment of Oral and Oropharyngeal Squamous Cell Carcinomas Before, During, and After the COVID-19 Pandemic, 2018–2024

Background/Objectives: Evidence regarding changes in oral and oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) care across the COVID-19 pandemic remains limited, particularly in Eastern Europe. This study evaluated temporal changes in surgical admission volume, operative complexity, a...

Circulating Biomarkers Related to Mitral Valve Prolapse: Current Evidence and Mechanistic Perspective

Although imaging remains central to diagnosis and risk stratification, circulating biomarkers provide complementary information reflecting myocardial stress, fibrosis, extracellular matrix remodeling, inflammation, and metabolic dysregulation. The purpose of this review is to cri...

Clinical Assessment of Obesity Beyond Body Mass Index: Adiposity Evaluation, Body-Composition Phenotyping and Disease Staging: A Narrative Review

Obesity is usually classified or assessed using the body mass index (BMI), mainly because BMI is simple and easy to apply. Its simplicity is also its main weakness. BMI does not measure fat mass, fat-free mass, or fat distribution. This is a relevant limitation, since individuals...

Blood Culture Positivity, Microbiological Spectrum, and Inflammatory Correlates in Patients Hospitalized with SARS-CoV-2 Infection During the Omicron BA.5 Wave: A Retrospective Cohort Study

Blood cultures are frequently obtained in hospitalized patients with COVID-19, although the diagnostic yield and clinical meaning of culture positivity vary markedly according to case mix, disease severity, and timing of sampling. Omicron-era data remain comparatively limited. We...

Spiritual Well-Being, Religiosity, Psychological Distress and Quality of Life in Adults with Cancer: A Cross-Sectional Study in a Romanian Oncology and Palliative Care Centre

Background: Spiritual wellbeing is increasingly recognised as a key area of complex oncology and palliative care, but evidence from Eastern Europe is still limited. Understanding how spiritual well-being and religiosity are related to psychological distress and quality of life ca...

Seeing Angiogenesis: Multiparametric Ultrasound as a Non-Invasive Window into the Vascularization Status of Cervical Lymph Nodes in Head and Neck Squamous Cell Carcinoma

Cervical lymph node status is the single most important prognostic determinant in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC), yet conventional gray-scale ultrasound relies on morphological criteria that only indirectly reflect the underlying biological process driving nodal pr...

Eriobotrya japonica (Loquat) Leaf Extract: An Integral In Vitro and In Ovo Approach to Antimelanoma Potential and Safety

Melanoma continues to be one of the most challenging diseases in oncology, given its aggressiveness and increased resistance to existing therapies. Therefore, the identification of novel therapeutic strategies is of considerable interest, with medicinal plants representing a prom...

Ethical Decision-Making in Entrepreneurial Dentistry: An Exploratory Conceptual Framework Informed by Romanian Healthcare Studies

Background/Objectives: Dental graduates make clinical decisions shaped by ethical principles, legal obligations, patient expectations, and private-practice economics. This study synthesized empirical findings from Romanian healthcare education and practice and proposes an explora...

Association Between Graves’ Disease and the Risk of Thyroid Carcinoma: The Role of Clinical, Metabolic, Hormonal, Immunological, and Ultrasound Biomarkers

Background: The relationship between Graves’ disease (GD) and thyroid carcinoma (TC) remains controversial, particularly regarding the predictive value of metabolic, hormonal, immunological, and ultrasound biomarkers. We performed a systematic review and meta-analysis to evaluate...

The Cost of the Cure: Antibiotic Exposure as a Risk Factor for Irritable Bowel Syndrome

The intricate interplay between the gut microbiome and the enteric nervous system remains a paramount focus in understanding the multifactorial pathogenesis of disorders of gut–brain interaction (DGBI), most notably irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). While the clinical entity of pos...

Beyond Accuracy: Pneumonia Severity Grading in Chest X-Rays Using RSNA 2018 Bounding-Box Extent Metadata and ViT

Chest X-ray pneumonia assessment is commonly formulated as a binary classification problem that does not explicitly represent radiographic burden. In this work, we reinterpret the RSNA 2018 Pneumonia Detection Challenge dataset by using expert bounding-box annotations to derive t...

Pulmonary Reserve and Respiratory Recovery After Cardiac Surgery: Insights from Preoperative Spirometric Phenotyping

Background: Postoperative respiratory dysfunction remains a frequent complication after cardiac surgery, yet the influence of preoperative pulmonary reserve on postoperative respiratory recovery remains incompletely understood. We investigated whether preoperative spirometric phe...

EUS-guided and US-guided percutaneous splenic biopsy: a systematic review and meta-analysis of separately pooled diagnostic and safety outcomes

Ultrasound (US)-guided percutaneous splenic biopsy has been widely used to evaluate focal or diffuse splenic lesions and has shown promising efficacy and safety. Endoscopic ultrasound (EUS)-guided biopsy has emerged as an alternative approach for tissue acquisition from splenic l...

Changing Etiological Patterns of Pediatric Meningitis: A Three-Year Experience from a Tertiary Pediatric Emergency Hospital in Romania

Background and Objectives: Pediatric meningitis remains a major diagnostic and therapeutic emergency because clinical presentation may be nonspecific and early etiological distinction directly influences treatment, infection control, and epidemiological surveillance. Although bac...

Clinical Phenotypic Spectrum and Multisystem Burden in Neurofibromatosis Type 1: A Retrospective Regional Cohort Study

Background: Neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1) is a multisystem genetic disorder characterized by marked phenotypic heterogeneity. This study aimed to describe the clinical spectrum and multisystem burden of NF1 in a regional retrospective cohort. Methods: We retrospectively analyzed...