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COVID-19 has been associated with an increased risk of thrombotic events; however, the reported incidence of deep vein thrombosis varies depending, at least in part, on the severity of the disease. Aim of this prospective, multicenter, observational study was to investigate the incidence of lower limb deep vein thrombosis as assessed by compression ultrasound in consecutive patients admitted to three pulmonary medicine wards designated to care for patients with COVID-19 related pneumonia, with or without respiratory failure but not requiring admission to an intensive care unit. Consecutive patients admitted between March 27 and May 6, 2020 were enrolled. Patients were excluded if they were less than 18-year-old or if compression ultrasound could not be performed for any reason. Patients were assessed at admission (t0) and after 7 days (t1). Major and non-major clinically relevant bleedings were recorded. Sixty-eight patients were enrolled. Two were excluded due to anatomical abnormalities that prevented compression ultrasound; sixty patients were retested at (t1). All patients were started on antithrombotic prophylaxis, unless therapeutic anticoagulation was required. Deep vein thrombosis as assessed by compression ultrasound was observed in 2 patients (3%); one of them was later deemed to represent a previous episode. No new episodes were detected at t1. One major and 2 non-major clinically relevant bleedings were observed. In the setting of patients with COVID-related pneumonia not requiring admission to an intensive care unit, the incidence of deep vein thrombosis is low and our data support not screening asymptomatic patients., Highlights • COVID-19 is characterized by increased risk of thrombotic events. • Compression ultrasound is an easy and reliable method to detect deep vein thrombosis. • The incidence of deep vein thrombosis in our COVID-19 patients not in ICU is very low. • Screening for deep vein thrombosis in these patients is not warranted.

Background and aims Despite hypercholesterolemia has been recognized to increase cardiovascular risk in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-infected patients, cholesterol-lowering therapy is underused in this population, due to fear of drug-drug interactions with antiretroviral therapy (ART). We investigated the effects of a nutraceutical combination (NC) on lipid profile, proprotein convertase subtilisin/kexin type 9 (PCSK9), subclinical inflammation and arterial stiffness in ART-treated HIV-infected patients. Methods This was a prospective randomized open-label trial with a cross-over design including 30 stable HIV-infected patients on ART with low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) >115 mg/dL, not taking lipid-lowering treatment. After a 3-week lipid stabilization period, the effects associated with 3 months of an oral NC containing red yeast rice and berberine vs. no active treatment (noNC) were assessed for plasma total cholesterol (TC), LDL-C, high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C), triglyceride (TG), lipoprotein(a), PCSK9, high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP) levels and aortic pulse wave velocity (aPWV). Results At baseline, significant correlations between PCSK9 levels, age (rho = −0.51, p=0.004), waist circumference (rho = 0.36, p=0.005) and CD4+ cell count (rho = −0.40, p=0.027) were observed. NC treatment effects corrected for noNC were significant for TC (−14%, p Conclusions The tested NC significantly reduced plasma cholesterol and PCSK9 levels, attenuated subclinical inflammation and improved arterial stiffness in stable HIV-infected patients on ART.

The aim of our paper is twofold: to introduce some general reflections on the task of lexical semantic annotation and the adequacy of existing lexical-semantic reference resources, while giving an overall description of the Italian lexical sample task for the SENSEVAL-2 experiment. We suggest how the SENSEVAL exercise (and comparison between the two editions of the experiment) can be employed to evaluate the lexical reference resources used for annotation. We conclude with a few general remarks on the gap between the lexicon, a partially decontextualised object, and the corpus, where context plays a significant role.

The paper reports on the design and construction of a multi-layered corpus of Italian, annotated at the syntactic and lexico-semantic levels, whose development is supported by dedicated software augmented with an intelligent interface. The issue of evaluating this type of resource is also addressed.