Begoña Talavera Andújar

• Pharmacist PhD
• PostDoc Position at University of Luxembourg

This study investigated the concentration profiles and geographical variability of contaminants in house dust across Europe. A collaborative trial (CT) was organized by the NORMAN network using pooled dust and advanced chromatographic and mass spectrometric techniques combined with suspect screening and non-target screening (NTS). Over 1200 anthrop...

Nontargeted screening (NTS) utilizing liquid chromatography electrospray ionization high-resolution mass spectrometry (LC/ESI/HRMS) is increasingly used to identify environmental contaminants. Major differences in the ionization efficiency of compounds in ESI/HRMS result in widely varying responses and complicate quantitative analysis. Despite an i...

Pathogenic variants in the Leucine-rich repeat kinase 2 (LRRK2) gene are a primary monogenic cause of Parkinson’s disease (PD). However, the likelihood of developing PD with inherited LRRK2 pathogenic variants differs (a phenomenon known as “reduced penetrance”), with factors including age and geographic region, highlighting a potential role for li...

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a complex and multifactorial neurodegenerative disease, which is currently diagnosed via clinical symptoms and nonspecific biomarkers (such as Aβ1–42, t-Tau, and p-Tau) measured in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), which alone do not provide sufficient insights into disease progression. In this pilot study, these biomarkers wer...

Imbalances of iron and dopamine metabolism along with mitochondrial dysfunction have been linked to the pathogenesis of Parkinson's disease (PD). We have previously suggested a direct link between iron homeostasis and dopamine metabolism, as dopamine can increase cellular uptake of iron into macrophages thereby promoting oxidative stress responses....

Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) is a complex and multifactorial neurodegenerative disease, which is currently diagnosed via clinical symptoms and non-specific biomarkers (such as Aβ1-42, t-Tau, and p-Tau) measured in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), which alone do not provide sufficient insights into disease progression. In this pilot study, these biomarkers we...

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is the second most prevalent neurodegenerative disease, with an increasing incidence in recent years due to the aging population. Genetic mutations alone only explain <10% of PD cases, while environmental factors, including small molecules, may play a significant role in PD. In the present work, 22 plasma (11 PD, 11 control...

Patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD) exhibit differences in their gut microbiomes compared to healthy individuals. Although differences have most commonly been described in the abundances of bacterial taxa, changes to viral and archaeal populations have also been observed. Mechanistic links between gut microbes and PD pathogenesis remain elusive...

As part of the revisions of our original manuscript, we performed 13 C-labelling experiments with cultures of the microorganism most strongly correlated with 2-hydroxypyridine (2-HP), i.e. the archaeal species Methanobrevibacter smithii . Although unlabelled 2-HP was detected in the cultures, the measurements by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry...

The analysis of polar metabolites based on liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) methods should take into consideration the complexity of interactions in LC columns to be able to cover a broad range of metabolites of key biological pathways. Therefore, in this study, different chromatographic columns were tested for polar metabolites incl...