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Giuseppe Argenziano,1,* Paolo Amerio,2 Maria Grazia Aragone,3 Ginevra Baggini,4 Manuela Baldari,5 Gianpiero Castelli,6 Simmaco Coppola,7 Antonio Costanzo,8,9 Rocco De Pasquale,10 Maria Concetta Fargnoli,11 Caterina Foti,12 Claudia Giofrè,13 Serena Lembo,14 Claudia Leporati,15,16 Francesco Loconsole,17 Giovanna Malara,18 Ketty Peris,19,20 Antonio Giovanni Richetta,21 Paola Savoia,22 Rossana Tiberio,23 Massimo Travaglini,24 Maria Teresa Uzzauto,25 Luca Bianchi26,* 1Dermatology Unit, University of Campania, Naples, Italy; 2Department of Medicine and Aging Science and Dermatologic Clinic, University “G. d’Annunzio”, Chieti-Pescara, Chieti, Italy; 3ASL AL, Alessandria, Italy; 4Osp. Civile di Varzi, Pavia, Italy; 5ASL4 Liguria, Genova, Italy; 6UOSD of Dermatology, Ospedale Umberto I°, Siracusa, Italy; 7IQVIA, Rome, Italy; 8Department of Biomedical Sciences, Humanitas University, Milano, Italy; 9Skin Pathology Laboratory, Humanitas Research Hospital IRCCS, Milano, Italy; 10UOC Dermatologia, AOU Policlinico “G. Rodolico – San Marco”, Catania, Italy; 11Dermatology, Department of Biotechnological and Applied Clinical Sciences, University of L’Aquila, L’Aquila, Italy; 12Department of Biomedical Science and Human Oncology, Dermatological Clinic, University of Bari, Bari, Italy; 13U.O.C. Dermatologia, A.O. Papardo, Messina, Italy; 14Dipartimento di Medicina, Chirurgia e Odontoiatria Scuola Medica Salernitana, University of Salerno, Fisciano, Italy; 15Dermatology Unit, ASL AL Casale Monferrato, Alessandria, Italy; 16Dermatology Unit, ASL TO4 Ivrea, Torino, Italy; 17Department of Dermatology, University of Bari, Bari, Italy; 18UOC of Dermatology, Grande Ospedale Metropolitano “BMM”, Reggio Calabria, Italy; 19Institute of Dermatology, Catholic University, Rome, Italy; 20Dermatology Unit, Fondazione Policlinico Universitario A. Gemelli IRCCS, Rome, Italy; 21Dipartimento di Scienze Cliniche Internistiche e Cardiovascolari Policlinico Umberto I University of Rome “La Sapienza”, Rome, Italy; 22Department of Health Science, Università del Piemonte Orientale, Novara, Italy; 23SCDU Dermatologia, AOU Maggiore della Carità, Novara, Italy; 24U.O.S.D. dermatologica - centro per la cura della psoriasi, Ospedale Perrino, Brindisi, Italy; 25U.O.C. Dermatologia, ASL Salerno, Ospedale “A:Tortora”-Pagani, Salerno, Italy; 26Dermatology Unit, Tor Vergata University Hospital, Rome, Italy*These authors contributed equally to this workCorrespondence: Giuseppe ArgenzianoDermatology Unit, University of Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”, Via Pansini, 5, Naples, 80131, ItalyTel +39335415093Fax +39 069 762 5822Email g.argenziano@gmail.comLuca BianchiUniversity of Rome “Tor Vergata”, Policlinico Tor Vergata, Viale Oxford 81, Rome, 00133, ItalyTel +39 0620902739Fax +39 0620902742Email luca.bianchi@uniroma2.itPurpose: For patients with psoriasis, treatment adherence and persistence are fundamental if therapeutic goals are to be met. Patient Support Programs (PSPs) may be used as a support tool to assist patients and health care professionals optimize treatment and improve disease management.Patients and Methods: In Italy, the PSP PSOLife CARE, which began on the 9th of February 2017 and is ongoing, aimed to support patients with psoriasis under therapy with secukinumab (Cosentyx®). A team of medical professionals including Dermatologists, Psychologists, Nutritionists, and field Nurses provided outpatient treatment as well as remote support via phone calls. Patients had a standard duration in the Program of 6 months. This report analyzes the data of patients who benefited from the Program from February 2017 to August 2020, for a total observation of 42 months.Results: We provide here a descriptive report on the benefits of participation in the PSOLife CARE Program for patients with psoriasis and medical professionals involved in their care. Throughout their time in the PSOLife CARE Program, patient satisfaction remained consistently high with sustained improvements observed in all aspects of quality of life (ie emotional, social, physical, and economic). Despite exiting from the Program, most patients continued to adhere to secukinumab. Medical professionals also reported positive outcomes on their interactions with patients, with more than half of those surveyed rating the overall quality of the Program as “Outstanding”.Conclusion: By supporting treatment adherence, the PSOLife CARE Program may have empowered patients to better manage their psoriasis, increasing their satisfaction with treatment and quality of life.Keywords: dermatology, PSOLife CARE Program, quality of life, treatment adherence

A uniform high-frequency solution is presented for the field radiated at finite distance by a semi-infinite beamscanning array of magnetic line sources located on a perfectly conducting half-plane. The field is represented in terms of Floquet waves plus their relevant singly and doubly diffracted rays, which arise from both the end of the array and the edge of the half-plane. This representation is uniformly valid also when transition conditions from propagating to evanescent Floquet waves occur. Furthermore, it provides a simple and attractive physical interpretation and is found numerically very effective, due to the fast convergence of the Floquet wave expansion for the field. © 1998 IEEE.

The shielding effectiveness of a corrugated thick screen is theoretically and experimentally investigated. This screen consists of a half-plane of finite thickness in which corrugations are etched on the smaller side. This structure provides a significant attenuation in the shadow region for both polarizations of the incident field; thus, it can be effectively used for protecting apparatuses from radiating interference as well as for decoupling nearby operating antennas. The shielding properties of the screen are described by a high-frequency formulation that involves dosed-form expressions. An experimental setup at X band has been arranged to test the effectiveness of a corrugated screen; the field in the shadow region is compared with that of a screen without corrugations. The experimental results compare very well with those obtained by the high-frequency expressions.

A closed-form high-frequency solution is presented for the near-field scattering by a thick screen illuminated by a line source at a finite distance. This solution is applicable to a thick screen with perfectly conducting side walls and either perfectly conducting or artificially soft boundary conditions on the face joining the two wedges. This latter condition is obtained in practice by etching on that face quarter of a wavelength deep corrugations with a small periodicity with respect to the wavelength. It is shown that the artificially soft surface provides a strong shadowing for both polarizations; thus, it is suggested that such configurations may usefully be employed to obtain an effective shielding from undesired interferences. Several numerical calculations have been carried out and compared with those from a method of moments (MoM) solution for testing the accuracy of our formulation, as well as to demonstrate the effectiveness of the corrugations in shielding arbitrarily polarized incident field. © 1997 IEEE.

A high-frequency solution is presented for the scattering in the near zone by a pair of coplanar skew edges when they are illuminated by a source at a finite distance. The solution is obtained by using a spherical-wave spectral representation of the first-order diffracted field from each edge. The final closedform asymptotic solution includes terms up to the second order. It is shown that this second-order contribution is of the same order as the first one in overlapping transition regions. Moreover, the solution is cast in a convenient form, which is also directly applicable to treat the case when the two edges share a common face for both soft and hard boundary conditions. By choosing appropriate reference systems, the formulation for the scalar case is directly used to construct the solution of the more general electromagnetic problem for an arbitrarily polarized incident field. Numerical results are presented and discussed. © 1997 IEEE.

Asymptotic, closed form expressions of the fringe currents of the plane angular sector of a plane wave far-field regime are derived using the Incremental Theory of Diffraction (ITD). Numerical results show that ITD is more accurate than the Uniform Theory of Diffraction. A double diffracted field is found to occur at a shadow boundary line equal to 52°.

A closed form, high-frequency solution is presented for the scattering in the near zone by a semi-infinite thick screen, when it is illuminated by a line source at finite distance. This solution is derived for a thick screen with perfectly conducting side walls, and either perfectly conducting or artificially soft boundary condition on the top face joining the two wedges. This last condition is practically obtained by etching on this face a quarter of wavelength deep corrugations with a small periodicity with respect to the wavelength. Owing to the particular properties of the artificially soft surface, a strong decoupling effect in the shadow region is achieved for both polarizations; thus, an effective shielding from undesired interferences is obtained.

A problem of a semi-infinite array of line sources located on a perfectly conducting half-plane has been studied by using a Floquet modes approach. This approach overcomes the slow convergence of the direct summation of the space fields radiated by each element of the array. The formulation presented can be extended to the 3D case.

A closed form, high-frequency solution for describing double diffraction mechanism at a pair of parallel wedges, when they are illuminated by a spherical wave is obtained using a spherical waves spectral representation of the first order diffracted field from each wave. In this solution, the case of two wedges sharing a common face is explicitly considered. Numerical calculations show that the present high frequency formulation fails so gracefully that it gradually blends into the solution of a single wedge when the distance between the two edges vanishes. This property is very significant in the analysis of the shadowing effects of thick screen.

Incremental diffraction coefficients at the edge of a circular horn (CH) are derived on the basis of the Incremental Theory of Diffraction (ITD). The resulting distributed diffracted field contributions are used to predict mode radiation in the near zone, as well as to the reciprocal problem of EM coupling of a spherical wave into the CH. Second order, incremental diffraction contributions are also included to preserve accuracy at aspects below the aperture plane. For simplicity purposes, the analysis is restricted to the scalar case, with hard boundary conditions on the walls. Thus, guidelines are provided for the more general EM case.

Two leading high frequency theories have provided very effective tools for engineering purposes namely the geometrical theory of diffraction (GTD) especially in its uniform extension (UTD) and the physical theory of diffraction (PTD). An incremental theory of diffraction has been developed which provides a unified framework for describing high frequency phenomena. The electromagnetic scattering from planar structures is investigated in order to demonstrate the validity of the incremental theory of diffraction (ITD).

The need for a corner diffraction coefficient in a UTD scheme arises when the leading edge diffracted field experiences a discontinuity as it occurs when the diffraction point disappears from an edge or changes abruptly its location from one edge to the other. The solution proposed will be used to weigh the plane wave spectrum located at a finite distance from the vertex. Also obtained is the asymptotic evaluation of the spectral integrals and for simplicity, the scalar case is treated in this paper and the formulation for hard boundary conditions given explicitly.

A high-frequency description of the scattering from complex structures that exhibits surface discontinuities such as edges and vertices, is of importance in a wide variety of practical applications. In this paper, a first order, high-frequency solution for the scattering by a corner is presented. The author's formulation is based on the Incremental Theory of Diffraction (ITD), which has been recently developed.

Cyclosporine A (CsA) is one of the systemic therapeutic options for moderate-to-severe psoriasis, based on its efficacy and rapidity of action. The current study investigated the response to CsA in patients with moderate-to-severe plaque psoriasis. TRANSITION was an observational, cross-sectional, multicentre study which evaluated the proportion of partial- and suboptimal-responders among patients with moderate-to-severe plaque psoriasis treated with continuous CsA for ≥12 weeks. Patients demonstrating a Psoriasis Area and Severity Index (PASI) response of ≥90, ≥75 and <90, ≥50 and <75 and <50 were defined as responders, suboptimal-responders, partial-responders, and non-responders, respectively. A total of 196 patients (mean age, 46.6 years; 62.8% males) from 14 sites in Italy were evaluated. At the study visit, the mean (SD) PASI score was 4.2(5.5) compared with 15.3(7.1) prior to the last CsA cycle. For response categories, 39.8%, 22.4%, 16.8%, and 20.9% of patients were responders, suboptimal-responders, partial-responders, and non-responders to CsA treatment. Overall, 28.6% of patients permanently discontinued treatment with CsA (lack of efficacy [10.2%], poor tolerability and voluntary discontinuation [3.6% each], and other [11.7%]). Patients were only partially satisfied with CsA treatment, reporting measurable impact on quality of life. Only 40% patients showed a satisfactory response to CsA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effects of the spherical wave blockage in reflector antennas is investigated. This problem is likely to occur in axially symmetrical feed antennas of single- and dual-reflector type in both single- and dual-reflector configurations, owing to the presence of primary feeds and their supports including struts that are normally placed between the primary source and the main reflector. The main reflector blockage due to large obstacles is estimated by the well-known null-field technique that employs fiat polygonal plate models of the masking structures to define the obscured area. Although this same approach may be used to predict the spherical wave blockage due to the struts, a more rigorous but yet efficient technique is also employed, which consists of superimposing to the primary field the high-frequency scattered field from the struts. This field is calculated by using scattering coefficients that are derived by locally approximating the actual structure, by an infinite circular cylinder. This latter formulation is compared with the null-field technique and validated by an experimental campaign. The measurement setup is particularly useful for isolating spherical wave-blockage effects. It consists of a single-reflector offset antenna where a single strut is mounted with its axis parallel to that of the focusing parabola, thus, practically enforcing the plane wave blockage to vanish. Comparisons with the measurements have shown that the null-field approach is adequate for predicting the secondary pattern for large polygonal obstacle, but it is unsatisfactory to treat the strut blockage. It is found that this latter can be successfully described with the more rigorous high-frequency approach. Index Terms - Reflector antennas.