L'Italia come modello per l'Europa e per il mondo nelle politiche sanitarie per il trattamento dell'epatite cronica da HCV

The World Health Organization foresees the elimination of HCV infection by 2030. In light of this and the curre nt, nearly worldwide, restriction in direct-acting agents (DAA) accessibility due to their high price, we aimed to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of two alternative DAA treatment policies: Policy 1 (universal): treat all patients, regardless of the fibrosis stage; Policy 2 (prioritized): treat only priori tized patients and delay treatment of the remaining patients until reaching stage F3. T he model was based on patient’s data from the PITER cohort. We demonstrated that extending HC V treatment of patients in any fibrosis stage improves health outcomes and is cost-effective

The spatial and temporal distribution of dendrite fragmentation in solidifying Al-Cu alloys under different conditions

The directional columnar solidification of Al-Cu alloy dendrites was studied in-situ by synchrotron X-ray radiography to investigate the spatial and temporal distribution of dendrite fragmentation, without and with an applied pulsed electromagnetic field (PEMF) and in different solidification directions. The differing arrangements had a strong and reproducible influence on fragmentation behaviour that was rationalised using a model of solute-driven re-melting of dendrite arms in microstructural regions of high vulnerability. Although absolute rates of fragmentation varied, all the fragmentation distributions had a characteristic peak in fragmentation rate at a distance of 500–800 μm into the mushy zone. Consistent with the need for solute-rich liquid flow for dendrite root re-melting, this peak was explained to occur under conditions where there was both comparatively steep liquid solute concentration gradients, measured directly from the radiographs, and relatively high permeability of the dendrite network to liquid flow