Valerie Marcil

• CHU Sainte-Justine

Background: Changes in food intake are common in children with cancer and are often caused by nausea and perturbations in sense of taste. The VIE (Valorization, Implication, Education) study proposes family-based nutrition and cooking education workshops during childhood cancer treatments. Process evaluation during implementation allows to assess...

Several factors can affect the nutritional status of children undergoing cancer therapy. The present review aims to describe children’s food intake during cancer treatments and to explore the contributing determinants. It also assesses the nutritional educational interventions developed for this clientele. Scientific literature from January 1995 to...

Background: Treatment of childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia (cALL) has reached unprecedented success leading to survival rates reaching 90%. This is regrettably linked to increased risk of developing long-term health-related sequels into early adulthood. Objective: This study aims at assessing the relationship between the vitamin D status an...

Discipline Clinique. Introduction et but de l’étude Les traitements de la leucémie lymphoblastique aiguë (LLA) pédiatrique laissent des séquelles importantes entre autres sur le plan cardiaque, métabolique et neurocognitif. Les survivants de la LLA présentent un risque accru d’obésité, de résistance à l’insuline, et de dyslipidémie [1]. L’excès de...

Background The remarkable progress in the treatment of childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia (cALL) has led to a survival rate reaching 90%. This success story is unfortunately linked to increased risk of impaired skeletal mass accumulation during childhood and adolescence, predisposing the patients to osteoporosis and pathological fractures at ad...

Background Epigenetic modifications such as DNA methylation are widely being studied in Crohn’s disease (CD). So far, studies using peripheral blood or intestinal tissue have not identified any consistent methylation signals that could enable discriminating between individuals with and without risk for CD. This lack of consistency may be related to...

Sar1B GTPase is a key component of COPII-coated vesicles that bud from the endoplasmic reticulum to export newly synthesized proteins. The aims of this study were to determine whether Sar1B responds to lipid regulation and to evaluate its role in cholesterol (CHOL) homeostasis. The influence of lipids on Sar1B protein expression was analyzed in Cac...

Hepatocyte nuclear factor 4 alpha (HNF4α) is a transcription factor involved in the regulation of serum glucose and lipid levels. Several HNF4A gene variants have been associated with the risk of developing type 2 diabetes mellitus. However, no study has yet explored its association with insulin resistance and the cardiometabolic risk in children....

Cranberry fruit has been reported to have high antioxidant effectiveness that is potentially linked to its richness in diversified polyphenolic content. The aim of the present study is to determine the role of cranberry polyphenolic fractions in oxidative stress, inflammation and mitochondrial functions using intestinal Caco-2/15 cells. The combina...

Background/Aims: Sar1b GTPase (Sar1b) represents an obligatory component of COPII vesicles that bud from the endoplasmic reticulum to transport proteins to the Golgi apparatus. Its genetic mutations lead to a severe disorder known as chylomicron retention disease. Despite growing knowledge on Sar1b, little is known about it tissue distribution and...

In the intracellular secretory network, nascent proteins are shuttled from the endoplasmic reticulum to the Golgi by transport vesicles requiring Sar1b, a small GTPase. Mutations in this key enzyme impair intestinal lipid transport and cause chylomicron retention disease. The main aim of this study was to assess whether Sar1b overexpression under a...

Increased dietary ratios of ω6/ω3 poly-unsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) have been implicated in pathogenesis of Crohn's disease (CD), but epidemiologic data are limited. We investigated whether variants of genes that control PUFA metabolism (CYP4F3, FADS1, and FADS2), along with the dietary ratio of ω6/ω3, confers susceptibility to CD. Based on data...

The gastrointestinal tract is frequently exposed to noxious stimuli that may cause oxidative stress, inflammation and injury. Intraluminal pro-oxidants from ingested nutrients especially iron salts and ascorbic acid frequently consumed together, can lead to catalytic formation of oxygen-derived free radicals that ultimately overwhelm the cellular a...

Background: Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) in Crohn's disease (CD) have identified associations with single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) rs11175593 at chromosome 12q12. The MUC19 and LRRK2 genes reside close to the GWAS signal, but it is as yet unclear which of the 2 genes represent the CD susceptibility genes. Methods: We studied assoc...

Background: Although genome-wide association studies (GWAS) and subsequent meta-analyses have confirmed associations between the PTPN2 (protein tyrosine phosphatase, nonreceptor type 2) gene and Crohn's disease (CD), the potential causal variants remain unidentified. We aimed to dissect potential causal CD-associated PTPN2 variants, assess their f...

Background Hepatocyte nuclear 4 alpha (HNF4α), involved in glucose and lipid metabolism, has been linked to intestinal inflammation and abnormal mucosal permeability. Moreover, in a genome-wide association study, the HNF4A locus has been associated with ulcerative colitis. The objective of our study was to evaluate the association between HNF4α gen...

SAR1b plays a significant role in the assembly, organization, and function of the coat protein complex II, a critical complex for the transport of proteins from the endoplasmic reticulum to the Golgi. Recently, mutations in SARA2 have been associated with lipid absorption disorders. However, functional studies on Sar1b-mediated lipid synthesis path...

The aims of the study were to test the susceptibility of THP-1 macrophages to develop oxidative stress and to deploy antioxidant defense mechanisms that insure the balance between the pro- and antioxidant molecules. Differentiated THP-1 were incubated in the presence or absence of iron-ascorbate (Fe/As) (100/1000μM) and the antioxidants Trolox, BHT...

Hepatocyte nuclear factor 4α (HNF4α) is a nuclear transcription factor mainly expressed in the liver, intestine, kidney, and pancreas. Many of its hepatic and pancreatic functions have been described, but limited information is available on its role in the gastrointestinal tract. The objectives of this study were to evaluate the anti-inflammatory a...

Circumstantial evidence suggests that oxidative stress plays a crucial role in the initiation and progression of atherosclerosis, but little is known about the relationship between oxidative stress per se, cholesterol transport and endothelial cell integrity. The aim of the present work is to tackle this issue by treating human umbilical vein endot...

Cholesterol uptake and the mechanisms that regulate cholesterol translocation from the intestinal lumen into enterocytes remain for the most part unclear. Since scavenger receptor class B type I (SR-BI) has been suggested to play a role in cholesterol absorption, we investigated cellular SR-BI modulation by various potential effectors administered...

Understanding the mechanisms involved in oxidative stress-induced foam cell formation is of fundamental importance for atherosclerosis. Our aim was to characterize the effects of oxidative stress on key receptors of macrophage cholesterol homeostasis, on the nuclear transcription factors PPAR and LXR regulating their expression, and on macrophage c...

Recent studies have documented the presence of Niemann-Pick C1-Like 1 (NPC1L1) in the small intestine and its capacity to transport cholesterol in mice and rats. The current investigation was undertaken to explore the localization and function of NPC1L1 in human enterocytes. Cell fractionation experiments revealed an NPC1L1 association with apical...

Transport mechanisms, whereby alimentary lipids are digested and packaged into small emulsion particles that enter intestinal cells to be translocated to the plasma in the form of chylomicrons, are impaired in cystic fibrosis. The purpose of this paper is to focus on defects that are related to intraluminal and intracellular events in this life-lim...

Studies employing human fetal intestine have yielded remarkable information on the role of polarized enterocytes in fat absorption. In this report, we investigated the intestinal expression, spatiotemporal distributions, ontogeny and function of the scavenger receptor, Class B, Type I (SR-BI) that plays a crucial role in cholesterol homeostasis. SR...

Recently, the idea was advanced that short-chain fatty acids (SCFA) may potentially regulate intestinal fat absorption. The aim of this investigation was to examine the effects of butyrate on the intracellular events governing the assembly of triglyceride-lipoproteins in enterocytes. To this end, differentiated human Caco-2 cells were exposed to 10...

Short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) are potent modulators of the growth, function, and differentiation of intestinal epithelia. In addition, high-fiber diets may protect against the development of atherosclerosis because of their cholesterol-lowering effects due, in large part, to SCFA production, liver sterol metabolism, and bile acid excretion. Altho...

Recently, the idea was advanced that short- chain fatty acids (SCFA) may potentially regulate intestinal fat absorption. The aim of this investigation was to examine the effects of butyrate on the intracellular events governing the assembly of triglyceride-lipoproteins in enterocytes. To this end, differentiated human Caco-2 cells were exposed to 1...