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Objective: Estimates the prevalence of asthma and other allergic disorders in a random group of adolescents living in the L'Aquila area, which was not covered by SIDRIA (Italian Studies on Respiratory Disorders in Children and the Environment). The second phase of the study showed considerable regional variations within Italy, with a higher prevalence of asthma and wheezing in Central Italy., Design: This study used the same standardised questionnaire of SIDRIA and included 1100 adolescents aged 13-14 years, between January-March 2004., Results: Prevalence of lifetime asthma was 6.7%, cumulative and current prevalence of wheezing were 19.1% and 9.0% respectively. A relatively high proportion of adolescents, 29.2%, reported night cough and 3.6% symptoms of severe asthma. Lifetime prevalence of hay fever and eczema were respectively 17.8% and 6.7%. Prevalence rates of allergic rhinitis and atopic-eczema symptoms were higher in females. The risk of asthma was associated to exposure to: pollen, to house dust mite and to paternal smoking, whereas current smoking in the adolescents was significantly associated to wheezing during the previous 12 months., Conclusion: Although asthma prevalence is relatively low in L'Aquila area, it represents an important public health problem that requires further researches into genetics, environmental and medical care factors.

Practices related to vaccines and transfusions aren't free of risk as regards complications and undesired effects. The no. 210/92 law lays down payments to people who are damaged in consequence of the administration of obligatory vaccines, transfusions and haemoderivatives. Our study valued law's sticking, analysing applications for payment sent in by damaged people to some ASL of Lazio and Abruzzo, in the period 1992-2000.

Chronic peripheral arterial disease affects up to 15% of adults over the age of 55 years; critical limb ischemia represents the most dramatic clinical outcome. Patients with chronic critical limb ischemia who are not candidate for surgical or percutaneous revascularization have impending limb loss; those who benefit from successful revascularization suffer from high rate of recurrent symptoms or revision surgery or progressive amputations. In these patients no medical treatment is considered effective for rest pain or ulcer healing. Therapeutic angiogenesis, which has the goal to achieve the process of new blood vessel formation via the administration of growth factors, has become a new promising hope. The discovery of the possibility of inducing sprouting of new vessels from preexisting vasa (angiogenesis) or the in situ differentiation of endothelial cells from stem cell precursors (vasculogenesis) have open new lease on life. However, a careful analysis of experimental results achieved in animal models is required before proposing for clinical setting. Although a major concern is that most of the experimental work has been done on animal models that do not represent the clinical process, benefit from growth factor administration or stem cell therapy has been proven in clinical trials, suggesting the importance of this new research frontier. This literature review is aimed to examine potential applications of therapeutic angiogenesis to treat critical limb ischemia with particular attention to angiogenesis obtained with stem cells.

A seroepidemiological survey was performed by an immunoglobulin G antibody-capture immunoassay on 1061 subjects from Palermo (Sicily), throughout the age range from birth up to 50 years. A proportional increase of seropositivity rate to mumps virus was shown in relation to increasing age, from 17.5% in the earliest years up to 60.3% in children aged 10 years. After the first decade of life, seropositivity rate reached a plateau staying constant up to the upper age classes explored. Given the relatively high frequency of complications upon mumps infection, it is suggested that an extended vaccination policy could cover a proportion of the non-immune adult subjects.

Testing for rotavirus detection in faeces from infants with acute diarrhea can be carried out, with high sensitivity, by immunofluorescence on rhesus monkey kidney cell lines (MA-104). Preincubation of viral inoculum with trypsin enhances further the sensitivity. In the present study we tried to assess the optimal conditions for detection of viral antigens, by analyzing the expression of virus-specific proteins at different times of infection and the effects of trypsin presence during virus adsorption and replication. Maximal production of viral antigens was obtained by infecting the cells 4 hours after cell-seeding and incubating them for 18 hours afterwards. In experiments with simian rotavirus SA-11, pretreated with trypsin and then with a trypsin inhibitor, a marked reduction in the percentage of fluorescent cells was observed thus indicating a role of the enzyme both on the virus and on the cell layer.

To examine the sensitivity and reliability of a latex agglutination test for detecting rotavirus in faecal samples, we have tested 145 stool specimens from pediatric patients with or without diarrhea, comparing such latex test to immunofluorescent antibody technique (IF) and ELISA. Among all samples positive by IF and ELISA, 52.9% were positive by latex test. This percentage was raised to 85.7% when only positive samples from patients with diarrhea were considered. We conclude that the latex test is an useful diagnostic tool in acute diarrhea because of its simplicity and of its sufficient sensitivity.