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For many years deficiency of vitamin D was merely identified and assimilated to the presence of bone rickets. It is now clear that suboptimal vitamin D status may be correlated with several disorders and that the expression of 1-α-hydroxylase in tissues other than the kidney is widespread and of clinical relevance. Recently, evidence has been collected to suggest that, beyond the traditional involvement in mineral metabolism, vitamin D may interact with other kidney hormones such as renin and erythropoietin. This interaction would be responsible for some of the systemic and renal effects evoked for the therapy with vitamin D. The administration of analogues of vitamin D has been associated with an improvement of anaemia and reduction in ESA requirements. Moreover, vitamin D deficiency could contribute to an inappropriately activated or unsuppressed RAS, as a mechanism for progression of CKD and/or cardiovascular disease. Experimental data on the anti-RAS and anti-inflammatory effects treatment with active vitamin D analogues suggest a therapeutic option particularly in proteinuric CKD patients. This option should be considered for those subjects that are intolerant to anti-RAS agents or, as add-on therapy, in those already treated with anti-RAS but not reaching the safe threshold level of proteinuria.

Objectives To evaluate the role of genetic background in osteoporosis/osteopenia development in beta-Thalassemia Major patients. Design and methods The influence of VDR (FokI, BsmI) as well as COLIA1 (Sp1) gene polymorphisms on BMD was investigated in 40 patients. Results Although the examined gene polymorphisms did not significantly affect BMD variations in our population, BsmI was found to display beneficial effects on patient response to alendronate therapy. Conclusion Genetic factors retain a potential role for improvement of osteoporosis management in thalassemic patients.

Even if the Koryakia earthquake (April 20, 2005 at 23:25:02-UTC) occurred in sparsely populated northeastern Russia about 40 people were injured and the several villages were destroyed. Some buildings and water supply systems were badly damaged as well. The Koryakia earthquake occurred in north-northeast of the Kamchatka Peninsula. The earthquake was in a complicated geological setting where the configuration and interaction of the tectonic plates between northeastern Asia and northwestern North America are still poorly understood. The aim of this paper is to study the Koryakia seismic sequence trough the application of the Delta/Sigma method (PEPI - Caccamo et al. 2005) and using data coming from the USGS data-bank. Using this method is possible to observe statistically significant anomalies in the temporal decay of seismic sequence before the occurrence of a large aftershock. The Delta/Sigma analysis show some anomalies in the temporal decay a few days before the occurrence of large aftershock. They possibly are not random fluctuations but probably could be considered as precursors. Fractal geometry is sometimes important to better explain the mechanisms of seismicity and so it could be useful to analyze the behavior of aftershocks occurrence. In this paper a fractal analysis of the seismic sequence was performed investigating the box-counting dimension (D0) and the correlation dimension (D2)., peer-reviewed