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Background and Aims elevated Lipoprotein (a) levels are well recognized as a genetic risk factor for atherothrombotic events. Recently, new therapeutic approaches – such as small interfering RNA (siRNA) and antisense oligonucleotides (ASOs) – have been developed and are under evaluation in phase 3 trials. Evidences from literature suggest the need for screening Lp(a) in premature coronary artery disease. Aim of our study was to evaluate, in a real world scenario: 1) the percentage of premature CAD in whom clinicians choose to screen Lp(a); 2) the prevalence of hyperLp(a) in premature CAD. Methods we retrospectively evaluated data of patients admitted for acute coronary syndrome at Department of Cardiology of Careggi University Hospital, Florence, between 1st January 2018 and 31th July 2022. Inclusion criteria were: age < 50 years for men and < 55 years for women; confirmed diagnosis of acute coronary syndrome with obstructive coronary artery disease at hospital discharge. Results we selected 226 patients (50 F and 176 M; total median age 46 years, F median age 49 years, M median age 45 years). LDL median values at admission were 117.12 mg/dl). Nine out of 226 pts (3.9%) had LDL levels higher than 190 mg/dl, suggesting the possible diagnosis of Heterozygous Familial Hypercholesterolemia (with respect to the expected prevalence in the general population: 1/250 (0.004%). No patient had hepatic or thyroid disease. Sixty-eight out of 226 pts (30%) had triglycerides levels higher than 150 mg/dl; 41/226 (18.1%) with levels higher than 200 mg/dl. As regards Lp(a) levels, a dosage was performed in 93/226 patients (41.2%). We found that lipoprotein dosage was required more frequently in the 2020, 2021 and 2022 years (respectively in the 61%, 49% and 70% of patients) than in the 2018 and 2019 years (respectively in the 27% and 23% of patients) (Figure 1). Among patients in whom lipoprotein was dosed, elevated Lp(a) levels (> 300 mg/L) were documented in 45/93 (48.4%). 15/93 (16.1%) patients had extreme elevated Lp(a) levels (> 700 mg/L) (Figure 2). In two patients we documented both extreme Lp(a) levels and LDL levels higher than 190 mg/dl; in the other patients, elevated Lp(a) levels were the only lipid parameter out of range, and the only risk factor for premature CAD. By comparing these patients with an historical cohort of patients with ACS and age >50 and 55 yrs in men and women respectively, we found at a multivariate analysis adjusted for classical risk factors that both elevated Lp(a) levels (OR:2.1 (95% CI 1.3–4.2), p Conclusions these results demonstrated that: 1) it is urgent, from a clinical point of view, to apply screening protocols in premature CAD including Lp(a) dosage; 2) elevated Lp(a) levels, and in particular extreme elevated Lp(a) levels, have an elevated prevalence in a population of premature CAD and are significantly and independently associated with the disease.

Background: The aims of this study were to compare the diagnostic accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, and positive and negative predictive values (PPV, NPV) of different cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) amyloid biomarkers and amyloid-Positron Emission Tomography (PET) in patients with a clinical diagnosis of Alzheimer&rsquo, s disease (AD) and Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD), to compare concordance between biomarkers, and to provide an indication of their use and interpretation. Methods: We included 148 patients (95 AD and 53 FTD), who underwent clinical evaluation, neuropsychological assessment, and at least one amyloid biomarker (CSF analysis or amyloid-PET). Thirty-six patients underwent both analyses. One-hundred-thirteen patients underwent Apolipoprotein E (ApoE) genotyping. Results: Amyloid-PET presented higher diagnostic accuracy, sensitivity, and NPV than CSF A&beta, 1&ndash, 42 but not A&beta, 42/40 ratio. Concordance between CSF biomarkers and amyloid-PET was higher in FTD patients compared to AD cases. None of the AD patients presented both negative A&beta, biomarkers. Conclusions: CSF A&beta, 42/40 ratio significantly increased the diagnostic accuracy of CSF biomarkers. On the basis of our current and previous data, we suggest a flowchart to guide the use of biomarkers according to clinical suspicion: due to the high PPV of both amyloid-PET and CSF analysis including A&beta, 42/40, in cases of concordance between at least one biomarker and clinical diagnosis, performance of the other analysis could be avoided. A combination of both biomarkers should be performed to better characterize unclear cases. If the two amyloid biomarkers are both negative, an underlying AD pathology can most probably be excluded.

SMARTVINO project is devoted to the study and implementation of innovative services able to convey information related to wine and its traceability to costumers and consumers. The basic idea is to realize a simple and user-friendly tool, addressed to all kind of users and therefore immediately effective for everyone. SMARTVINO system allows users to take a photo of the previously marked company logo, depicted on the wine label, by a ordinarily known smartphone and then redirected to lots of detailed information related to the wine they are buying or drinking. Contents can concern the productive process, the vine variety the wine is made by, the geo-spatial localization of the vineyards, recommendations about which course is the most appropriate to be coupled with the wine, etc; in general, all the information or suggestions the producing winery wants to share with its customers. Such information can be in form of text, images, videos and web pages. The project is still on-going at the date of writing. Next activities will be dedicated to draft a detailed plan for the commercial use of results. This paper is devoted to present the outcomes of the project and how these can be exploited in wine scenario.

Nowadays, determining if an image appeared somewhere on the web or in a magazine or is authentic or not has become crucial. Image forensics methods based on features have demonstrated so far to be very effective in detecting forgeries in which a portion of an image is cloned somewhere else onto the same image. Anyway such techniques cannot be adopted to deal with splicing attack, that is, when the image portion comes from another picture that then, usually, is not available anymore for an operation of feature match. In this paper, a procedure in which these techniques could also be employed will be shown to get rid of splicing attack by resorting to the use of some repositories of images available on the Internet like Google Images or TinEye Reverse Image Search. Experimental results are presented on some real case images retrieved on the Internet to demonstrate the capacity of the proposed procedure.