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HCV infection poses a global health threat, with significant morbidity and mortality. This study examines HCV trends in a large Italian region from 2015 to 2022, considering demographic changes, evolving clinical profiles, treatment regimens and outcomes, including the impact of the COVID‐19 pandemic. This multicentre retrospective study analysed demographics, clinical histories and risk factors in 6882 HCV patients. The study spanned before and after the direct‐acting antiviral (DAA) era, and the COVID‐19 period, focusing on treatment outcomes (SVR12, non‐SVR12 and patients lost to follow‐up). Statistical methods included ANOVA, multinomial logistic regression, Kruskal–Wallis test and chi‐square analysis, and were conducted adhering to the intention‐to‐treat (ITT) principle. The cohort, mainly Italian males (average age 58.88), showed Genotype 1 dominance (56.6%) and a high SVR12 rate (97.5%). The pandemic increased follow‐up losses, yet SVR12 rates remained stable, influenced by factors like age, gender, cirrhosis and comorbidities. Despite COVID‐19 challenges, the region sustained high SVR12 rates in HCV care, emphasising the importance of sustained efforts in HCV care. Continuous screening and targeted interventions in high‐risk populations are crucial for achieving WHO elimination targets. The study highlights the resilience of HCV care during the pandemic and provides insights for future public health strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The epidemiological relevance of viral acute respiratory infections (ARIs) has been dramatically highlighted by COVID-19. However, other viruses cannot be neglected, such as influenza virus, respiratory syncytial virus, human adenovirus. These viruses thrive in closed spaces, influenced by human and environmental factors. High-risk closed communities are the most vulnerable settings, where the real extent of viral ARIs is often difficult to evaluate, due to the natural disease progression and case identification complexities. During the COVID-19 pandemic, wastewater-based epidemiology has demonstrated its great potential for monitoring the circulation and evolution of the virus in the environment. The "Prevention of ARIs in indoor environments and vulnerable communities" study (Stell-ARI) addresses the urgent need for integrated surveillance and early detection of ARIs within enclosed and vulnerable communities such as long-term care facilities, prisons and primary schools. The rapid transmission of ARIs in such environments underscores the importance of comprehensive surveillance strategies to minimise the risk of outbreaks and safeguard community health, enabling proactive prevention and control strategies to protect the health of vulnerable populations. This study consists of designing and validating tools for integrated clinical and environmental-based surveillance for each setting, coupled with analytical methods for environmental matrices. The clinical surveillance involves specialized questionnaires and nasopharyngeal swabs for virus identification, while the environmental surveillance includes air and surface microbiological and chemical monitoring, and virological analysis of wastewater. Integrating this information and the collection of behavioural and environmental risk factors into predictive and risk assessment models will provide a useful tool for early warning, risk assessment and informed decision-making. The study aims to integrate clinical, behavioural, and environmental data to establish and validate a predictive model and risk assessment tool for the early warning and risk management of viral ARIs in closed and vulnerable communities prior to the onset of an outbreak. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, the number of members of the Italian Association of Epidemiology (AIE) has increased considerably, and their profile has undergone many changes. The aim of this work is to describe the characteristics of the members, with particular attention to those who have been continuously enrolled. To evaluate these characteristics, the data from membership forms submitted to the Association and information available on the new website in the personal profile area (period 2016-2024) were used. The characteristics considered were: gender, age, education, and job position of the member, Region, and type of affiliated institution. Members with at least three registrations during the period considered, including at least one in the last three years (2022-2024), are considered continuous members.In 2024, AIE counts 557 members, of whom 340 (61.0%) are female and 182 (32.7%) are under 35 years old. This data confirms the growing trend observed since 2015, when the number of members was just above 300, considering that each year there is a quota of new members amounting to about 30%. A total of 382 members can be considered continuous. Over 90% of these members work in 8 Regions (Lazio, Piedmont, Emilia-Romagna, Lombardy, Tuscany, Veneto, Puglia, and Sicily), while the other regions are scarcely or not represented at all. Over time, and with the arrival of new members, the Association is shifting towards the academic world, while the proportion of professionals working in public health institutions has decreased. Members are overall highly educated; however, while older cohorts have predominantly a medical and biological education, younger cohorts increasingly have statistical/mathematical education. Seventy percent of the members have a permanent contract, 5% have a fixed-term contract, and 13% have an atypical contract. Precarious contracts tend to be lower among medical graduates and remain higher in other health professions and non-health-related degrees.AIE is dealing with a period of dynamism and openness, marked by the increase in the number of the members and the transformation of their occupational and educational profile. It is crucial to support and promote the ongoing positive changes, such as the wider geographic representativeness and the entry of new recruits, also facilitated by multiple activities carried out by AIE, including congresses, working groups, webinars, training courses, and collaborations with other scientific societies. At the same time, it might be useful to open a discussion on the meaning and consequences of the increase of academic members and the reduction, at least in relative terms, of individuals coming from public health. Finally, it will be necessary to approach some critical issues, such as the still poor multidisciplinarity and the persistence of job insecurity, especially among graduates in educational pathways that still do not fit into the professional profiles recognized by the NHS.

Background: the peer-review process, which is the foundation of modern scientific production, represents one of its essential elements. However, despite numerous benefits, it presents several critical issues., Objectives: to collect the opinions of a group of researchers from the epidemiological scientific community on peer-review processes., Design: cross-sectional study using a questionnaire evaluation., Setting and Participants: a 29-question survey was administered to 516 healthcare professionals through the SurveyMonkey platform. The questions focused on the individual characteristics of the respondents and their perceived satisfaction with some characteristics of the review process as well as their propensity of changing some aspects of it. In addition, three open-ended questions were included, allowing respondents to provide comments on the role that reviewers and the review process should play. Descriptive statistics were produced in terms of absolute frequencies and percentages for the information collected through the questionnaire. Secondly, a multiple logistic regression analysis was conducted to assess the willingness to change certain aspects of peer review, adjusting for covariates such as age, sex, being the author of at least one scientific work, being a reviewer of at least one scientific work, and belonging to a specific discipline. The results are expressed as odds ratios (ORs) and their 95% confidence intervals (95%CI). Text analysis and representation using word cloud were also used for an open-ended question., Main Outcomes Measures: level of satisfaction regarding some characteristics of the peer-review process., Results: a total of 516 participants completed the questionnaire. Specifically, 87.2% (N. 450) of the participants were the authors of at least one scientific publication, 78.7% were first authors at least once (N. 406), and 71.5% acted as reviewers within the peer-review process (N. 369). The results obtained from the multiple logistic regression models did not highlight any significant differences in terms of propensity to change for age and sex categories, except for a lower propensity of the under 35 age group towards unmasking, defined as the presence of reviewers and editorial boards names on the publish article (OR <35 years vs 45-54 years: 0.51; 95%CI 0.29-0.89) and a higher propensity for post-formatting proposals, defined as the possibility of formatting the article following journal guidelines after the acceptance, among those under 45 (OR <35 years vs 45-54 years: 1.73; 95%CI 0.90-3.31; OR 35-44 years vs 45-54 years: 2.02; 95%CI 1.10-3.72). Finally, approximately 50% of respondents found it appropriate to receive credits for the revision work performed, while approximately 30% found it appropriate to receive a discount on publication fees for the same journal in which they acted as reviewers., Conclusions: the peer-review process is considered essential, but imperfect, by the professionals who participated in the questionnaire, thus providing a clear picture of the value that peer-review adds rigorously to each scientific work and the need to continue constructive dialogue on this topic within the scientific community.

Introduction: Epidemiology is increasingly involved on a wide variety of topics and to engage different professionals and disciplines in an increasingly active way. A fundamental role is played by young researchers active in Italian epidemiology who create opportunities for meeting and discussion, in the name of multidisciplinarity and integration of different skills., Objective: The aim of this paper is to provide a detailed description of the topics most frequently studied in epidemiology by young people and to highlight any changes in these topics in the pre- and post-Covid-19 workplaces., Methods: All abstracts submitted in the years 2019 and 2022 by young participants in the Maccacaro Prize, an annual award aimed at Italian association of epidemiology (Aie) conference addressed to people under 35 years of age, were considered. In addition to the comparison of the topics, a comparison of the related work structures and their geographical location was carried out by grouping the research centres into three Italian geographical regions: north, centre and south/islands., Results: Between 2019 and 2022, the number of abstracts participating in the Maccacaro Prize increased. The interest in topics related to infectious diseases, vaccines, and pharmaco-epidemiology has sharply increased, while in environmental and maternal and child epidemiology it has moderately increased. Social epidemiology, health promotion and prevention, as well as clinical and evaluative epidemiology, have experienced a decrease in interest. Finally, after analysing the geographical distribution of reference centres, it was discovered that certain regions, such as Piedmont, Lombardy, Veneto, Emilia-Romagna, Tuscany and Latium, have a strong and consistent presence of young people in the field of epidemiology. Conversely, there is a small number of young professionals working in this field in other Italian regions, especially in Southern regions., Conclusions: The pandemic has changed our personal and working habits, but it has also played a fundamental role in making epidemiology known. The increase in young people joining an association such as the Aie is a clear sign of the growing interest in this discipline.

Systematic reviews (SRs) are essential tools for synthesising the available scientific evidence on a given topic, and in some healthcare fields they represent the core for public health decisions according to the principles of evidence-based medicine. However, keeping up to date with the volume of scientific production is not always easy given the estimated annual increase in scientific publications of 4.10%. Indeed, SRs take a long time, with an average time of eleven months from design to submission to a scientific journal; to make more efficient this process and timely achieve evidence collection, systems such as living systematic reviews and artificial intelligence tools have been developed for the automation of SRs. These tools can be divided into three categories: visualisation tools, active learning tools and automated tools with Natural Language Processing (NLP). Nlp makes it possible to reduce the time spent and human error, for example, in the screening of primary studies; there are already many tools that apply to all stages of a SR, currently the most widely used are those with "human-in-the-loop" where the reviewer is involved in the various steps to verify the goodness of the work performed by the model. At this time of transition in SRs, new approaches are emerging and are increasingly appreciated by the community of reviewers; leaving some more basic but also error-prone tasks to machine learning tools can increase the efficiency of the reviewer and the overall quality of the review itself.

This article is about current challenges to evidence-based medicine (EMB) in Italy. The authors, who share a 20-year commitment to the field of clinical research, discuss what they define as a phase of "stagnation" in practicing and teaching methods and research tactics, both in clinical and academic settings. Early success of EBM cultural movement was not persistent. The authors reason about how the teaching of EBM has remained a niche, concerning few professionals compared to the needs of the country. The authors identify some reasons that might have led to inconsistent attention to research methodology and address ways to strengthen the contribution of academic medicine to clinical research.

Split-Liver and living-related donor liver transplantation are the newest and both technically and ethically most challenging developments in liver transplantation and have contributed to a reduction in donor shortage. We report the technical aspects of surgical procedures performed to achieve a partial graft from a cadaveric and a live donor.