"Mediterranean diet" is commonly defined as a type of diet based on traditional foods of the Southern Italian regions, assuming that in the past the southern populations enjoyed a balanced and healthy diet. In fact, up to the middle of the twentieth century, widespread poverty in large parts of the population led to malnutrition due to lack of calories and essential nutrients. Only among the upper classes consumption of food was reasonable and respectful of the recommendations of the "Mediterranean diet pyramid". The fact remains that many traditional dishes can be recommended because they are well balanced on nutrients, tasty and appetizing.

Social marketing uses the principles and techniques of commercial marketing by applying them to the complex social context in order to promote changes (cognitive; of action; behavioral; of values) among the target population in the public interest. The advent of Internet has radically modified the communication process, and this transformation also involved medical-scientific communication. Medical journals, health organizations, scientific societies and patient groups are increasing the use of the web and of many social networks (Twitter, Facebook, Google, YouTube) as channels to release scientific information to doctors and patients quickly. In recent years, even Healthcare in Italy reported a considerable application of the methods and techniques of social marketing, above all for health prevention and promotion. Recently the association for health promotion "Social marketing and health communication" has been established to promote an active dialogue between professionals of social marketing and public health communication, as well as among professionals in the field of communication of the companies involved in the "health sector". In the field of prevention and health promotion it is necessary to underline the theme of the growing distrust in vaccination practices. Despite the irrefutable evidence of the efficacy and safety of vaccines, the social-cultural transformation together with the overcoming of compulsory vaccination and the use of noninstitutional information sources, have generated confusion among citizens that tend to perceive compulsory vaccinations as needed and safe, whereas recommended vaccinations as less important. Moreover, citizens scarcely perceive the risk of disease related to the effectiveness of vaccines. Implementing communication strategies, argumentative and persuasive, borrowed from social marketing, also for the promotion of vaccines is a priority of the health system. A typical example of the application of social marketing, as mentioned in the manuscript, is the campaign to promote the proper practice of HPV vaccination through the use of effective and cost-saving communication strategies.

Background:

Informal caring or caregiving is very common in our postindustrial society. Caregiving burden grows with the worsening of cognitive impairment of the patient and is one of the factors influencing institutionalization. Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a type of dementia that is chronic and deteriorative. The symptoms of this neuropsychiatric disorder generally begin to manifest after the age of sixty and currently 8.9 million family caregivers provide assistance to someone with AD or a related dementia. As the patient's condition worsens, it increases the burden on the caregivers, due to the physical, psychological, and emotional stresses that result from caring for the patient.

Methods:

A search of the literature was conducted on electronic database: PubMed, Google Scholar, Science direct, CINAHL in a exploratory way. Inclusion criteria were: articles in English and Italian published between 1999-2011 which mentioned Alzheimer's caregivers, burden, stressors, and institutionalization. The exclusion criterion was failure to mention the word "caregivers". About 100 titles were found and 30 articles abstracts with key words in the title were reviewed. Of the 30 articles selected for further review based on the relevance to the study purpose, 17 articles were finally selected for inclusion in this literature review.

Results:

Results display that caregiver burden is influenced by patient behavioral and cognitive status, hours involved in care, stress, social isolation, gender, relationship to the patient, availability of support resources, and caregiver characteristics. Assessment tools available to assess and recognize risk factors and burden in caregivers are useful both in terms of caregivers health and decision on istitutionalization.

Conclusion:

Literature suggests to provide information for health care providers to reduce burden and support caregiver health and well-being. Assessment tools available to assess and recognize risk factors and burden in caregivers should be used more often to contribute to reducing caregiver stress and the impact of institutionalization.

Italy has participated in the Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) study since 2000. These surveys collect data every four years on the well-being and health behaviour of boys and girls aged 11, 13 and 15. Until 2007, the coordination group of the University of Turin, Siena and Padua directly sent the questionnaires to each sampled school to collect the data. The sample of about 4500 students was nationally representative. In 2008 the HBSC became part of the project "Surveys on behavioral risks in children aged 6-17 years", coordinated by the National Institute of Health (ISS) and promoted by the Ministry of Health, in collaboration with the Ministry of Education, University and Research. For the first time, in 2010, the survey was conducted by health workers in collaboration with teachers in all regions with a representative sample, not just at the national level, but also at regional level. In the 2,504 sampled schools, 77,113 students (25,079 eleven-year-old, 26,048 thirteen-year-old and 25,986 fifteen-year-old) completed an anonymous questionnaire. Knowledge of the health-related behaviour of school-aged adolescents may help monitoring and enable policies for young people to be formulated and implemented.

Background:

Road accidents are a major public health problem that affect all age groups but their impact is most striking among the young. The aim of this study is to quantify the burden of road traffic injuries, their mortality and direct in-patient economic costs and to identify the age classes at highest risk for severe road traffic injuries, through analysis of data collected by information systems of an Italian Local Health Authority.

Methods:

The study was conducted in a Local Health Authority of Veneto Region. Injured people were selected from Emergency Department (2006-2010). Data were linked to the Hospital Information System for hospital admissions and to the Mortality Registry to check 30-day mortality. The direct costs associated to hospitalizations were estimated through Diagnosis Related Group reimbursement rates. Multivariate analysis was performed using hospitalization and mortality as the dependent variables and gender, age, day of week when accident occurred as the independent variables. Traffic injury, hospitalization and mortality incidence rates were calculated by gender and age per 100,000 residents per year.

Results:

The road traffic injuries were 9,192, decreasing from 2,112 in 2006 to 1,980 in 2010. Among injured persons 55.3% were male (68.1% among 15-19 age class); 41.7% young people aged 15-34 years (43.9% among male, 39.0% among female). Total hospitalisation rate was 5.9%. Overall mortality rate was 0.3% (0.9% among aged 65 or older). The cost of hospital admission was euro 2,742,505 (hospitalization mean cost euro 5,097). Risk of hospitalization and death was higher in male, in elderly and during week end. Young people aged 15-19 had the highest incidence of visits (2,258.4 per 100,000) and high hospitalisation weekend and mortality rates (respectively 101.5 and 8.5).

Conclusions:

Analysis at local level, using current data sources, permits to estimate the burden of injuries caused by road-traffic, to describe the characteristics of injured persons and finally to estimate costs of care. All this information could be used to make the population aware of its own risk for road accidents. Linkage of these data with police and transport data is required to focus prevention on higher risk groups and to adopt effective local road safety strategies.

Drug factsheets (DF) provide an interesting model for the evaluation of medical-popular texts in Italian and other languages. In this research 50 DF in Italian and the 50 corresponding DF in French were studied, offering a reasoned analysis of the modalities of presentation of medical-scientific information in two neo-Latin languages and a systematic comparison of the technical features of use of Italian and French medical languages. Basic parameters identified for evaluation were the following: length of texts, length of sentences, clarity of information, hierarchy of information, readability of texts, modalities of involvement of the reader. These parameters were also examined through time, given that the DF evaluated covered the last three decades. The diachronic analysis and the comparative assessment proposed document the positive characteristics and limits of a diffused model of medical-popular communication.

Background:

The contamination of shellfish with gastroenteric viruses may cause outbreaks because they are often eaten raw or under-cooked. High-hydrostatic pressure treatments have already proven to be effective in reducing high viral load in shellfish samples. The objectives are the assessment of the viral load reduction of contaminated clams using HHP treatments at different pressures and times and the study of the changes caused by these treatments in some food physical parameters.

Methods:

Clams were contaminated with a solution containing Feline Calicivirus; they were closed in envelopes and treated with 300, 400, 500, 600 MPa for 1, 3, 5, 7 min for every pressure value. After the treatment the residual viral titre was calculated. The texture parameters were obtained after treating clams samples at the same pressure values but only for 3 and 7 min and analysing them with a TPA test.

Results:

HHP treatments of 500 and 600 MPa were sufficient to cause a total inactivation at every timelength considered while with 300 and 400 MPa after 1min, concentrations of 1.13 and 0.55 respectively were found. In general hardness and gumminess tend to increase after the treatment whereas springiness and cohesiveness decrease a bit.

Conclusions:

HHP treatments showed good sterilization ability against FCV but it's necessary to consider that FCV has a lower resistance to disinfection than Human norovirus. Texture changes are in line with what is reported in literature.

Injuries and infectious diseases show high levels of morbidity at home. It is known that diseases associated with the consumption of contaminated or poorly preserved food, can be significantly reduced if proper hygiene practices are observed. This article analyzes the main risks associated with household food consumption and aims to highlight some of the recommendations that are still widely disregarded. In particular, we highlight the issues concerning the management of food (especially cooking and storage) and water (mineral and tap water), as well as good manufacturing practices that the consumer have to take to avoid food contamination. For this purpose, a detailed information on prevention would provide people with a greater awareness of risk and, therefore, a improved perception to the real dangers.

Background:

It is well demonstrated that influenza vaccination coverage among health care workers and health professions students continues to be low, despite WHO and CDCs strongly recommend flu shot for these categories. Aim of this work is to investigate among students the flu risk perception (both seasonal and 2009 H1N1), knowledge and attitudes towards vaccination and the main factors of acceptance or refusal of the vaccination.

Methods:

The study population includes 662 health professions students from the University of Florence. Survey was conducted from October 2010 to March 2011 by an anonymous questionnaire consisting of multiple-choice questions. Statistical analysis was performed in SPSS 19 and the dichotomous variables were analysed using chi2 test and Fisher's exact test.

Results:

The proportion of students vaccinated against seasonal flu was 10.3% in 2007, 12.1% in 2008, 12.6% in 2009. A lower percentage (9.6%) has received the H1N1v vaccine. In 2009, the majority of the vaccinated students chose to get immunized in order to protect themselves (84.8% for seasonal flu and 71% for H1N1) and other people (over 77% both for seasonal and H1N1). The most common reason to refuse vaccination was to perceive a low disease risk (62.5% for seasonal and 61.9% for H1N1).

Conclusions:

Our findings suggest the need to promote a better and accessible offer and to extend flu shot to students during vaccination campaign, in order to increase the primary prevention through vaccination among future's health care workers.

Viral hepatitis type E is highly endemic in many developing countries, where large water-borne epidemics caused by viral genotype 1 and - to a lesser degree - by genotype 2 cyclically occur, resulting in high morbidity and mortality, especially among pregnant women. In developed countries, the disease is usually diagnosed in travelers coming back from endemic countries, but an increasing number of sporadic locally acquired hepatitis cases caused by genotype 3 and 4 have recently been reported. The wide-spread distribution of HEV3 and HEV4 in domestic pigs, wild boars, deer, as well as in other mammals, suggests that infections caused by these genotypes may have a zoonotic source. HEV3 infection can evolve to chronic infection in immunosuppressed patients; in addition, it may be associated with neurological disorders and extrahepatic manifestations. Two recently developed recombinant vaccines have proved to be safe and effective. One of such vaccines has recently been licensed for use in China.