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Of 550 mentally retarded patients in an Italian institution, 125 (23%) were found to be infected with intestinal parasites. The infections were most frequent in young men, those with severe mental retardation, the chronically institutionalized and those living in older wards. Ninety-four (75.2%) of the parasitised subjects were infected only with protozoa, 25 (20%) only with helminths, and six (4.8%) with protozoa and helminths. Entamoeba histolytica and E. dispar infections were detected, but at low prevalences; in-vitro culture in Robinson's medium and isoenzyme electrophoresis of the cloned amoebic isolates indicated one infection with E. histolytica (zymodeme XII) and two infections with E. dispar (zymodemes I and III). All three Entamoeba -positive subjects were asymptomatic cyst-passers. Antibodies to E. histolytica were detected in seven (1%) of the sera from the 550 patients examined; only one of these was a carrier of an E. dispar strain at the time of investigation. The low prevalences of all the parasitic infections and of the amoebic infections in particular (compared with those observed previously in institutions for the mentally retarded) reflect relatively good facilities and sanitary conditions, an adequate number of well trained staff and good control of the more susceptible subjects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Divertor Tokamak Test (DTT) facility is in advanced design and construction phase at the ENEA laboratories in Frascati, Italy, to contribute to the study, the design and assessment of systems for the treatment of heat exhaust. The DTT Toroidal Field (TF) magnet system consists of 18 superconducting coils, fed in series by a single power supply (TFPS), which is a 24-pulses thyristor-based converter with an output DC current up to of 44 kA. In case of a quench in the superconductors, the magnetic energy stored in the coils is extracted by 3 Fast Discharge Units (FDUs) in series with 3 sectors of 6 TF coils. After the respective contracts were awarded, the TFPS and the FDUs are currently in the final design phase which is addressed in this paper. In particular, the analysis is focused on the most innovative aspects of the design, as the use of silicon carbide (SiC) varistors instead of discharge resistors and of a fully electronic and completely redundant high-current switch without any mechanical device. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Only few publications have been reported on Health-related Quality of Life (HRQoL) in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS). EDSS is the most common outcome measure for either impairment or disability of MS, but it is not able to catch other aspects of MS impact on HRQoL. The authors performed a cross-sectional study on the group of all patients with MS who were diagnosed at least 4 years before 1998 in Catania (South Italy). One hundred and eighty patients out of 308 were enrolled in the study. SF-36 was used to catch the HRQoL of MS patients. EDSS, Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) and time since diagnosis were investigated as variables affecting the HRQoL of MS patients. The patients showed significant lower mean scores for all SF-36 health dimensions compared with sex- and age-adjusted scores in a general healthy Italian population (p<0.001). EDSS scores correlated only with physical functioning (r=-0.76 p<0.001). As expected, the more severe was the disease, the longer its duration and the lower the patients' skillness on HRQoL. BDI showed high partial correlations with all SF-36 health domains with r=-0.38 to -0.65 (p<0.001). This study showed that SF-36 is able to assess the HRQoL of MS patients. Depression strongly influenced the HRQoL of MS patients. EDSS and time since diagnosis also affected the HRQoL of MS patients. Our results are comparable with other European studies.