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Background: Understanding how HLA polymorphisms may affect both susceptibility, course and severity of Covid-19 infection could help both at the clinical level to identify individuals at higher risk from the disease and at the epidemiological one to explain the differences in the epidemic trend among countries or even within a specific country. Covid-19 disease in Italy showed a peculiar geographical distribution from the northern most affected regions to the southern ones only slightly touched.Methods: In this study we analysed the regional frequencies for the most common Italian haplotypes from the Italian Bone Marrow Donor Registry (HLA-A, -B, -C and -DRB1 at four-digit level). Then we performed Pearson correlation analyses among regional haplotypes estimated frequency in the population and Covid-19 incidence and mortality.Results: In this study we found that the two most frequent HLA haplotypes in the Italian population, HLA-A*:01:01g-B*08:01 g-C*07:01g-DRB1*03:01g and HLA-A*02.01g-B*18.01g-C*07.01g-DRB1*11.04g, had a regional distribution overlapping that of Covid-19 and showed respectively a positive (suggestive of susceptibility) and negative (suggestive of protection) significant correlation with both Covid-19 incidence and mortality.Conclusions: Based on these results, in order to define such HLA haplotypes as a factor effectively associated to the disease susceptibility, the creation of national networks that can collect patients' samples from all regions for HLA typing should be highly encouraged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Utilizing archival materials, this paper examines the case of the Genoa-based firm, Ansaldo, which, by the early decades of the 20th century, had emerged as a major force in the inter-related fields of engineering, shipbuilding, and metal and steel manufacture in Italy. Following financial problems immediately after World War I and during the 1920s, the company was subsequently taken under the umbrella of the Italian State's financial holding unit, the Institute for Industrial Reconstruction (IRI), in the 1930s. Utilizing Lewin's theory of change as a framework for investigating change in management accounting, the paper examines the internal and external factors influencing the development of cost/management accounting at the company. These are also examined against the background of the development of scientific management, both in Italy and elsewhere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]