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In Italy, malaria continues to be one of the most common imported parasitoses; therefore, continuous surveillance of epidemiological data and clinical management is needed. In 2016, the National Institute for Infectious Diseases 'Lazzaro Spallanzani' in Rome promoted a retrospective questionnaire-based survey to assess the clinical management of imported malaria cases in Italy in 2015. The questionnaire was sent to 104 Tropical and/or Infectious Diseases Units in the country, and 37 of them filled out and returned the questionnaires. A total of 399 malaria cases were reported in 2015, mostly caused by Plasmodium falciparum and imported from Africa. Malaria chemoprophylaxis was correctly used by a minority of patients. Most patients presented with uncomplicated malaria and were treated orally. In severe cases, intravenous artesunate or quinine alone or in combination were administered, although one third of these severe cases received oral treatment. This retrospective survey reveals a lack of homogeneity in management of malaria-imported cases in Italy. Improvement of malaria chemoprophylaxis, standardization of clinical management of malaria cases and harmonization of oral and intravenous drug availability are needed throughout the country.

A new procedure is proposed for the voltammetric determination of ultra-trace cadmium(II), copper(II), lead(II), platinum(II), palladium(II), rhodium(III) and zinc(II) by a single run of square wave adsorptive catalytic stripping voltammetry. The voltammetric cell was based on a typical three-electrodes set-up: working electrode (stationary hanging mercury drop), reference electrode (Ag|AgCl|KClsat) and auxiliary electrode (platinum). The supporting electrolyte contained the formazone complex together with dimethylglyoxime and the disodium salt of ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid. Validation of the analytical procedure was obtained by the analysis of standard reference materials (Mussel Tissue BCR-CRM 278, Oyster Tissue NIST-SRM 1566a). Comparison with spectroscopic measurements was performed. Good accuracy was achieved. The analytical procedure was finally applied to mussels and clams sampled on the mouth of Po river, employed as bio-monitors.

A new application of voltammetric techniques in stripping mode to the quantitative determination of metals belonging to the platinum group (PGM) in herbal medicines, at the ultra-trace level, is reported. Pd (II), Pt (II) and Rh (III) are determined by means of square-wave adsorption voltammetry (SWAdSV); Os (VIII) and Ru (III) are determined through square-wave voltammetry in catalytic mode (SWCV); Ir (III) is determined through the application of square-wave catalytic voltammetry in adsorption mode (SWAdCSV). In all the applied methods, the voltammetric cell has the conventional setting with three-electrodes, which sees the presence of a suspended mercury-drop electrode (HMDE) or a glassy carbon electrode (GCE) as working electrodes for the determination of Ir (III). The auxiliary electrode was a platinum electrode, and an Ag∣AgCl∣KClsatd. electrode was employed as reference electrode. Validation of the analytical procedure here proposed has been achieved using reference standards: NIST-SRM 1570a (Spinach Leaves) and NIST-SRM 1573a (Tomato Leaves), both added with pure metal standards, obtaining satisfying precision values, better than the limits set for the validation of quantitative methods. Following the verification of the validity of the here presented procedure, commercially available herbal medicines, based on Eucalyptus globulus, Harpagophytum procumbens DC and Taraxacun officinale weber, were analyzed. Standard samples were also analyzed by atomic absorption spectroscopy, in order to have a reference technique for validating the entire procedure.

3D cylindrical layered scaffolds with anisotropic mechanical properties were prepared according to a new and simple method, which involves gelatin foaming, deposition of foamed strips, in situ crosslinking, strip rolling and lyophilization. Different genipin concentrations were tested in order to obtain strips with different crosslinking degrees and a tunable stability in biological environment. Before lyophilization, the strips were curled in a concentric structure to generate anisotropic spiral-cylindrical scaffolds. The scaffolds displayed significantly higher values of stress at break and of the Young modulus in compression along the longitudinal than the transverse direction. Further improvement of the mechanical properties was achieved by adding strontium-substituted hydroxyapatite (Sr-HA) to the scaffold composition and by increasing genipin concentration. Moreover, composition modulated also water uptake ability and degradation behavior. The scaffolds showed a sustained strontium release, suggesting possible applications for the local treatment of abnormally high bone resorption. This study demonstrates that assembly of layers of different composition can be used as a tool to obtain scaffolds with modulated properties, which can be loaded with drugs or biologically active molecules providing properties tailored upon the needs.

Strontium has a beneficial role on bone remodeling and is proposed for the treatment of pathologies associated to excessive bone resorption, such as osteoporosis. Herein, the possibility to utilize a biomimetic scaffold as strontium delivery system is explored. Porous 3D gelatin scaffolds containing about 30% of strontium substituted hydroxyapatite (SrHA) or pure hydroxyapatite (HA) are prepared by freeze-drying. The scaffolds display a very high open porosity, with an interconnectivity of 100%. Reinforcement with further amount of gelatin provokes a modest decrease of the average pore size, without reducing interconnectivity. Moreover, reinforced scaffolds display reduced water uptake ability and increased values of mechanical parameters when compared to as-prepared scaffolds. Strontium displays a sustained release in phosphate buffered saline: the quantities released after 14 d from as-prepared and reinforced scaffolds are just 14 and 18% of the initial content, respectively. Coculture of osteoblasts and osteoclasts shows that SrHA-containing scaffolds promote osteoblast viability and activity when compared to HA-containing scaffolds. On the other hand, osteoclastogenesis and osteoclast differentiation are significantly inhibited on SrHA-containing scaffolds, suggesting that these systems could be usefully applied for local delivery of strontium in loci characterized by excessive bone resorption.

Supporting Web-based services through geographical distributed clusters of servers is a common solution to the increasing volume and variability of modern traffic. These architectures pose interesting challenges to request management strategies where the most important goal is not to achieve maximum performance, but to guarantee stable and robust results. In this paper, we propose novel request management algorithms that are based on autonomic principles that is, on loose collaboration among the closest nodes and no knowledge about the global system state. Experimental evaluation shows that our autonomic-enhanced algorithms can guarantee robust performance in a variety of settings and reduce standard deviations of the response times with respect to existing request management algorithms.

Methotrexate may rarely provoke serositis, even with low doses and after just a few weeks of therapy. We report here a rare case of pleuropericarditis due to methotrexate. The effusion resolved after the withdrawal of the drug and the beginning of anti-inflammatory therapy; there was no relapse during a 10-month follow-up.