Preface of the 31st Italian Symposium on Advanced Database Systems

This volume contains the proceedings of the 31st Italian Symposium on Advanced Database Systems (SEBD - Sistemi Evoluti per Basi di Dati), held in Galzinagno Terme (Padua, Italy) from 2 to 5 July 2023.</p

Preface of the 31st Italian Symposium on Advanced Database Systems

This volume contains the proceedings of the 31st Italian Symposium on Advanced Database Systems (SEBD - Sistemi Evoluti per Basi di Dati), held in Galzinagno Terme (Padua, Italy) from 2 to 5 July 2023.</p

Characteristics and Drug Utilization of Patients with Hereditary Angioedema in Italy, a Real-World Analysis

This real-world analysis investigated the characteristics and treatment patterns of patients with hereditary angioedema (HAE) in Italy using the administrative data of health units across Italy. Patients were identified via exemption code or HAE-specific treatments (thus, all known forms, type I, II and, III, were included). The index date was that of first prescription of HAE treatments within the inclusion period (01/2010–06/2021) or of the date of exemption. The number of HAE patients included was 148 (43.2% male, mean age 43.3 years). Gastrointestinal disorders affected 36.5% patients, hypertension affected 28.4%, hypercholesterolemia affected 11.5%, and depression affected 9.5%. The frequent gastrointestinal involvement was further confirmed by the use of antiemetics and systemic antihistamines that doubled after the index date. Among patients enrolled by treatment (n = 125), n = 105 (84%) were receiving a treatment for acute attacks. This analysis provided insights into the characterization of patients with HAE and their management in Italian clinical practice, suggesting that an unmet therapeutic need could be present for such patients in terms of the clinical burden

The Use of Oral Amino-Bisphosphonates and Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Outcomes

The determinants of the susceptibility to severe acute respiratory syndrome-coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection and severe coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) manifestations are yet not fully understood. Amino-bisphosphonates (N-BPs) have anti-inflammatory properties and have been shown to reduce the incidence of lower respiratory infections, cardiovascular events, and cancer. We conducted a population-based retrospective observational cohort study with the primary objective of determining if oral N-BPs treatment can play a role in the susceptibility to development of severe COVID-19. Administrative International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision, Clinical ModificationI (ICD-9-CM) and anatomical-therapeutic chemical (ATC) code data, representative of Italian population (9% sample of the overall population), were analyzed. Oral N-BPs (mainly alendronate and risedronate) were included in the analysis, zoledronic acid was excluded because of the low number of patients at risk. Incidence of COVID-19 hospitalization was 12.32 (95% confidence interval [CI], 9.61-15.04) and 11.55 (95% CI, 8.91-14.20), of intensive care unit (ICU) utilization because of COVID-19 was 1.25 (95% CI, 0.38-2.11) and 1.42 (95% CI, 0.49-2.36), and of all-cause death was 4.06 (95% CI, 2.50-5.61) and 3.96 (95% CI, 2.41-5.51) for oral N-BPs users and nonusers, respectively. Sensitivity analyses that excluded patients with prevalent vertebral or hip fragility fractures and without concomitant glucocorticoid treatment yielded similar results. In conclusion, we found that the incidence of COVID-19 hospitalization, intensive care unit (ICU) utilization, and COVID-19 potentially related mortality were similar in N-BPs-treated and nontreated subjects. Similar results were found in N-BPs versus other anti-osteoporotic drugs. We provide real-life data on the safety of oral N-BPs in terms of severe COVID-19 risk on a population-based cohort. Our results do not support the hypothesis that oral N-BPs can prevent COVID-19 infection and/or severe COVID-19; however, they do not seem to increase the risk. (c) 2021 The Authors. Journal of Bone and Mineral Research published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of American Society for Bone and Mineral Research (ASBMR)

Ethics-aware Data Governance (Vision Paper)

The number of datasets available to legal practitioners, policy makers, scientists, and many other categories of citizens is growing at an unprecedented rate. Ethics-aware data processing has become a pressing need, considering that data are often used within critical decision processes (e.g., staff evaluation, college admission, criminal sentencing). The goal of this paper is to propose a vision for the injection of ethical principles (fairness, non-discrimination, transparency, data protection, diversity, and human interpretability of results) into the data analysis lifecycle (source selection, data integration, and knowledge extraction) so as to make them first-class requirements. In our vision, a comprehensive checklist of ethical desiderata for data protection and processing needs to be developed, along with methods and techniques to ensure and verify that these ethically motivated requirements and related legal norms are fulfilled throughout the data selection and exploration processes. Ethical requirements can then be enforced at all the steps of knowledge extraction through a unified data modeling and analysis methodology relying on appropriate conceptual and technical tools

Ethics-aware Data Governance (Vision Paper)

The number of datasets available to legal practitioners, policy makers, scientists, and many other categories of citizens is growing at an unprecedented rate. Ethics-aware data processing has become a pressing need, considering that data are often used within critical decision processes (e.g., staff evaluation, college admission, criminal sentencing). The goal of this paper is to propose a vision for the injection of ethical principles (fairness, non-discrimination, transparency, data protection, diversity, and human interpretability of results) into the data analysis lifecycle (source selection, data integration, and knowledge extraction) so as to make them first-class requirements. In our vision, a comprehensive checklist of ethical desiderata for data protection and processing needs to be developed, along with methods and techniques to ensure and verify that these ethically motivated requirements and related legal norms are fulfilled throughout the data selection and exploration processes. Ethical requirements can then be enforced at all the steps of knowledge extraction through a unified data modeling and analysis methodology relying on appropriate conceptual and technical tools

Ethics-aware data governance

The number of datasets available to legal practitioners, policy makers, scientists, and many other categories of citizens is growing at an unprecedented rate. Ethics-aware data processing has become a pressing need, considering that data are often used within critical decision processes (e.g., staff evaluation, college admission, criminal sentencing). The goal of this paper is to propose a vision for the injection of ethical principles (fairness, non-discrimination, transparency, data protection, diversity, and human interpretability of results) into the data analysis lifecycle (source selection, data integration, and knowledge extraction) so as to make them first-class requirements. In our vision, a comprehensive checklist of ethical desiderata for data protection and processing needs to be developed, along with methods and techniques to ensure and verify that these ethically motivated requirements and related legal norms are fulfilled throughout the data selection and exploration processes. Ethical requirements can then be enforced at all the steps of knowledge extraction through a unified data modeling and analysis methodology relying on appropriate conceptual and technical tools

Impatto a breve termine dell'inquinamento dell'aria nelle citt\ue0 coperte dalla sorveglianza epidemiologica EpiAir2

OBIETTIVO: stimare l\u2019impatto a breve termine dell\u2019inquinamento atmosferico sulla popolazione adulta di 23 citt\ue0 italiane nel periodo 2006-2009 nell\u2019ambito del progetto EpiAir2. DISEGNO, MATERIALI E METODI: per ogni citt\ue0 inclusa nello studio \ue8 stato calcolato l\u2019impatto dell\u2019effetto a breve termine dell\u2019inquinamento atmosferico sulla mortalit\ue0. In particolare, sono stati calcolati i decessi attribuibili a concentrazioni delle polveri (PM10 e PM2.5) superiori a soglie differenti definite dalla legislazione europea o nell\u2019ambito delle linee guida dell\u2019Organizzazione mondiale della sanit\ue0 (per il PM10: 20 e 40 \u3bcg/m3, riduzione del 20% ad arrivare a 20 \u3bcg/m3 e superamento del limite di 35 giorni con concentrazioni medie di 50 \u3bcg/m3; per il PM2.5: 10, 18 e 25 \u3bcg/m3, riduzione del 20% ad arrivare a 18 \u3bcg/m3). La stima di impatto \ue8 stata ottenuta combinando la stima di effetto delle polveri, il livello di mortalit\ue0 osservato e i livelli di concentrazione degli inquinanti misurati dalle reti di monitoraggio urbane. Per quanto riguarda le stime di effetto, sono state utilizzate le distribuzioni a posteriori specifiche per citt\ue0 risultanti da una metanalisi bayesiana. L\u2019incertezza sulle stime di impatto \ue8 stata calcolata con metodi Monte Carlo. RISULTATI: nell\u2019insieme delle 23 citt\ue0 valutate nel presente studio il numero di decessi attribuibili agli effetti a breve termine delle concentrazioni di PM10 superiori a 20 \u3bcg/m3 e di PM2.5 superiori a 10 \u3bcg/m3 nel periodo 2006-2009 \ue8 risultato rispettivamente pari allo 0,9% (assumendo indipendenza tra citt\ue0 l\u2019intervallo di credibilit\ue0 all\u201980% \ue8 0,4-1,4) e allo 0,8% (ICr80% 0,2-1,3) della mortalit\ue0 naturale. L\u2019impatto delle concentrazioni di polveri PM10 e PM2.5 \ue8 risultato concentrato nelle citt\ue0 della Pianura Padana, della Piana fiorentina, e nelle grandi realt\ue0 metropolitane di Roma, Napoli e Palermo: per il PM10 la percentuale sui decessi \ue8 risultata 1,0% (ICr80% 0,4-1,5) contro 0,4% (ICr80% 0,2-0,7) nelle altre citt\ue0 analizzate. Se i livelli di concentrazione delle polveri fossero stati inferiori del 20%, complessivamente l\u2019impatto si sarebbe ridotto del 42% per il PM10 e del 51% per il PM2.5. CONCLUSIONI: i livelli di inquinamento osservati nel periodo in studio sono stati responsabili di un numero importante di decessi nelle citt\ue0 analizzate. Politiche di contenimento basate sulla diminuzione percentuale delle concentrazioni annuali di polveri interesserebbero tutte le citt\ue0 coperte dallo studio e potrebbero ridurre in modo importante l\u2019impatto dell\u2019inquinamento sulla salute

Indicatori ambientali nello studio EpiAir2: I dati di qualit\ue0 dell'aria per la sorveglianza epidemiologica

OBIETTIVO: costruzione di indicatori ambientali di inquinamento aerodiffuso per finalit\ue0 di sorveglianza epidemiologica in 25 citt\ue0 italiane per il progetto EpiAir2 (2006-2010) e presentazione dei dati di dieci anni di sorveglianza in 10 citt\ue0 italiane (2001-2010). DISEGNO: sono stati raccolti dati di particolato (nelle frazioni PM10 e PM2.5 ), biossido di azoto (NO2 ) e ozono (O3 ), considerati fattori di rischio per la salute. I datimeteorologici considerati come confondenti nell\u2019analisi dell\u2019effetto degli inquinanti sono stati: temperatura, umidit\ue0 relativa (e la variabile derivata \u201ctemperatura apparente\u201d) e pressione barometrica. I criteri per la selezione delle stazioni dimonitoraggio e imetodi di calcolo per la costruzione di indicatori ambientali a partire dalle serie giornaliere disponibili sono stati scelti in continuit\ue0 con la precedente edizione di EpiAir. Per tutte le citt\ue0, \ue8 stata verificata l\u2019omogeneit\ue0 dei dati selezionati nel rappresentare l\u2019esposizione delle popolazioni. SETTING E PARTECIPANTI: il progetto EpiAir2 coinvolge per gli anni 2006-2010 le citt\ue0 diMilano,Mestre-Venezia,Torino, Bologna, Firenze, Pisa, Roma,Taranto,Cagliari e Palermo, gi\ue0 presenti nello studio EpiAir. A questo elenco vanno aggiunte le citt\ue0 di Treviso, Trieste, Padova, Rovigo, Piacenza, Parma, Ferrara, Reggio Emilia, Modena, Genova, Rimini, Ancona, Bari, Napoli e Brindisi. RISULTATI: nel periodo considerato \ue8 stato osservato un decremento delle concentrazioni di particolato nella maggior parte delle citt\ue0 in analisi, mentre non si pu\uf2 giungere a conclusioni cos\uec nette per NO2 e ozono. L\u2019analisi dell\u2019andamento temporale degli indicatori ha evidenziato valori medi annuali di PM10 superiori ai 40 \u3bcg/m3 in alcune citt\ue0 della Pianura Padana, e valori medi annuali di NO2 costantemente superiori ai 40 \u3bcg/m3 nelle citt\ue0 di Trieste, Milano, Padova, Torino, Modena, Bologna, Roma e Napoli. CONCLUSIONE: l\u2019ampliamento del progetto EpiAir, con l\u2019inclusione di ulteriori 13 citt\ue0, ha permesso di evidenziare peculiarit\ue0 legate alle differenti aree geografiche in studio e numerose situazioni di criticit\ue0 con superamenti dei valori di concentrazione limite fissati dalla legislazione corrente. I risultati dello studio EpiAir2 confermano la necessit\ue0 di un sistema di sorveglianza dell\u2019inquinamento aerodiffuso nei centri urbani e industriali al fine di ottenere stime affidabili dell\u2019esposizione della popolazione residente e di monitorarne l\u2019andamento nel tempo