Age at first intercourse and HPV immunization

The licence of the first human papillomavirus vaccine (HPV) has important implications for the most appropriate age for a mandatory immunization.In this paper data taken from a recent study show that more than 10% of the Italian women report having already had a sexual intercourse by the age of 15.There is thus sufficient evidence to recommend administration of the HPV vaccine to all girls by the age of 12

'L'INTERPRETAZIONE GIUDIZIALE DEI TRATTATI INTERNAZIONALI'

The thesis is devoted to treaty interpretation by international judges. The subject has already been studied in depth by international law\u2019s scholars: this work is an attempt of analysis from the philosophy of law\u2019s perspective. In particular, the thesis focuses on three main topics: the first chapter is devoted to the concept of \u201cinternational treaty\u201d, the second chapter is devoted to the question if interpretation is an art or a science and the third chapter concerns the possibility to interpret a treaty using domestic rules of interpretation. These topics allow the author to highlight three different issues: 1) the relationship between international law system and national law systems; 2) the problems related to interpretation of multilingual texts; 3) the problems related to multicultural comunication. One of the main topic discussed in this work, the more relevant for philosophy of law, concerns the role of article 33 of Vienna Convention on multilingual texts: differently from what international law scholars think, this article, according to the author, is the most important rule of treaty interpretation. The reason is that the interpreter is obliged to manage/face with languages wich are different from his own native language: in this sense, from the interpretation of a treaty a lot of problems due to linguistic and cultural differences could rise

Impact of food and water-borne diseases on European population health

Composite health measures are increasingly applied in studies aiming at describing the burden of diseases, and food and water-borne diseases (FWDs) are no exception. The Burden of Communicable Diseases in Europe (BCoDE) is a project led and funded by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) with the purpose of encouraging and empowering public health experts in the estimation of the impact of communicable diseases expressed in Disability Adjusted Life Years (DALYs). Calculation of DALYs and a critical assessment of burden of disease outputs require a thorough consideration of a number of methodological and epidemiological decisions ranging from modelling (e.g. incidence versus prevalence), disease model parameters (e.g. risks of developing complications or death) and the data feeding the number of cases.Burden of disease studies produce useful results for public health decision-making, in particular when they aim at informing preventive strategies. For this purpose, we attributed FWDs results from the BCoDE 2015 study to different exposure routes. We discuss these in the more general perspective of generating burden of disease evidence for planning and prioritisation, including the potentials and limitations of its methodology

Human Papillomavirus (HPV) infection and genotype frequency in the oral mucosa of newborns in Milan, Italy

Human papillomavirus (HPV) causes cutaneous and mucosal infections in both adults and children. In order to evaluate HPV prevalence and the spectrum of genotypes in the oral cavity of paediatric subjects, a retrospective study was carried out on oral-pharyngeal swabs collected from 177 newborns aged 0-6months. HPV-DNA was detected by a nested-PCR; the viral typing was made through DNA sequencing. HPV infection was identified in 25 subjects (14.1%) and the sequence analysis showed eight distinct genotypes. These data confirm HPV detection in newborn oral mucosa. Further investigations are needed to clarify the methods of HPV acquisition

HPV genotypes detected in the oropharyngeal mucosa of HIV-infected men who have sex with men in Northern Italy

The aim of this study was to investigate the epidemiological profile of HPV oropharyngeal infections in HIV-infected men who have sex with men. A total of 135 subjects were enrolled at the L. Sacco University Hospital (Milan, Italy) to evaluate their HPV oropharyngeal infection status at baseline and at a follow-up visit at least 12 months later. HPV DNA was detected from oropharyngeal swabs using an in-house nested PCR that amplifies a segment of the L1 gene. The PCR products were then sequenced and genotyped. A greater percentage of high-risk genotypes was identified compared to low-risk genotypes (13\ub77% vs. 6\ub79%, P < 0\ub705), and two uncommon alpha-HPV genotypes were detected, i.e. HPV-102 and HPV-114. HPV infection prevalence was 24\ub74% and the cumulative incidence was 24\ub71%. During the follow-up period, one case of HPV infection (HPV-33) persisted, while the overall rate of infection clearance was 58\ub73%. HPV oropharyngeal infection was widespread in the cohort examined, and most of the infections were transient and cleared within 12 months. These results may help to clarify the role of HPV in the oropharynx and may also improve our understanding of the need to implement preventive strategies in at-risk populations

Molecular characterization and phylogenetic analysis of human influenza A viruses in three consecutive seasons with different epidemiological profiles

INTRODUCTION: Influenza activity and influenza virus circulation were observed in Lombardy (northern Italy) during three consecutive seasons and the molecular characteristics of circulating viruses analysed to control for introduction of new variants. METHODS: The molecular characterization of 38 isolates, namely 20 A/H3N2 and 18 A/H1N1 influenza strains from the 2005/06, 2006/07 and 2007/08 seasons, was performed by sequence analysis of the globular head region of the HA protein (HA1 subunit), specific for influenza virus A/H3 and A/H1. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION: The last three influenza seasons in the study region were characterized by medium-low activity. A typical co-circulation of several variants was shown for A/H3 viruses for approximately two years and were subsequently almost entirely substituted by new emerging variants. Vice versa, A/H1 viruses had a more homogeneous circulation with a single lineage clearly dominating each season. The HA sequences of the A/H3 and the A/H1 viruses isolated in the last three seasons fell into 4 and 3 principal phylogenetic groups, respectively. No evidence of positive or negative selection in the sequence alignments was observed. CONCLUSIONS: Molecular characterization of the influenza viruses in three consecutive seasons highlighted considerable heterogeneity in their HA sequences. A careful surveillance of genetic changes in the HA1 domain during seasonal influenza epidemics may reveal immune escape and provide early information on newly emerging strains with epidemiologic inference

Chlamydia trachomatis prevalence and chlamydial/ HPV co-infection among HPV-unvaccinated young italian females with normal cytology

Infections caused by Chlamydia trachomatis (Ct) and human papillomavirus (HPV) are the two main sexually transmitted infections; however, epidemiological data on Ct prevalence and Ct/HPV co-infection in Italy are scant. This study aimed at estimating the prevalence of Ct infection and Ct/HPV co-infection in young HPV-unvaccinated females with normal cytology, and placed particular attention on the possible association between Ct-DNA positivity and different HPV infecting genotypes. Five hundred 66 healthy females aged 16-26 years without cervical lesions, previously assessed for HPV infection (HPV-DNA prevalence: 18.2%), were tested for Ct-DNA. The overall prevalence of Ct was 5.8% (95% CI: 4.2-8.1), while Ct/HPV co-infection was recorded in 2.7% (95% CI: 1.6-4.3) of subjects. Compared with HPV-DNA-negative females, HPV-DNA positive subjects had significantly (P < 0.001) higher odds of being infected with Ct (odds ratio of 4.20, 95% CI: 2.01-8.71). Both Ct and Ct/HPV infections were much more prevalent in under 18-year-olds than in older women. Subjects positive for single high-risk HPV genotypes and various multiple HPV infections had higher odds of being Ct-DNA positive. Our findings confirm that HPV and Ct infections are very common among asymptomatic young Italian females. This underlines the urgent need for nationwide Ct screening programs and reinforcement of sexual health education, which would be the most important public health strategies, since no Ct vaccines are currently available

Human papillomavirus detection in paraffin-embedded colorectal cancer tissues

Human papillomavirus (HPV) has a well-recognized aetiological role in the development of cervical cancer and other anogenital tumours. Recently, an association between colorectal cancer and HPV infection has been suggested, although this is still controversial. This study aimed at detecting and characterizing HPV infection in 57 paired biopsies from colorectal cancers and adjacent intact tissues using a degenerate PCR approach. All amplified fragments were genotyped by means of sequencing. Overall, HPV prevalence was 12.3 %. In particular, 15.8% of tumour tissues and 8.8% of non-cancerous tissue samples were HPV DNA-positive. Of these samples, 85.7% were genotyped successfully, with 41.7% of sequences identifying four genotypes of the HR (high oncogenic risk) clade Group 1; the remaining 58.3% of HPVgenotyped specimens had an unclassified \u3b2-HPV. Examining additional cases and analysing whole genomes will help to outline the significance of these findings

Measles surveillance activities in the Metropolitan Area of Milan during 2017-2018

Introduction In Italy, the transmission of measles is still endemic, and 7,919 cases were reported to the National Surveillance System between January 2017 and December 2018. Aim of this study is to report the results of the measles surveillance activities in the Metropolitan City of Milan from March 2017 to December 2018, and to evaluate the surveillance performance WHO indicators. Methods The Local Health Units (LHUs) carried out case investigations and collected specimens to send to the EpiSoMI Lab (Subnational Reference Laboratory, SRL) of the University of Milan for cases/outbreaks confirmation and genotyping performed according to the WHO Guidelines. Results Overall, 610 suspected measles cases were reported by the surveillance system of the Metropolitan City of Milan. A total of 439 out of 540 cases with adequate specimens were laboratory-confirmed by molecular and/or serological assays. Two-hundred and thirty-six cases were notified as sporadic and 203 as related to 94 outbreaks. The most confirmed cases were aged 15\u201339 years, almost all not vaccinated. Overall, 282 cases were genotype D8 and 118 genotype B3. The evaluation of a set of indicators to monitor the quality of surveillance activities demonstrated the proficiency of the EpiSoMI Lab. Conclusions A well-done investigation of cases and outbreaks by the surveillance local system, in a timely manner, in order to notify and investigate suspected cases and to laboratory confirm or discard cases is fundamental to reduce morbidity, to prevent further virus transmission and to achieve measles elimination

Weighted norm inequalities for polynomial expansions associated to some measures with mass points

Fourier series in orthogonal polynomials with respect to a measure $\nu$ on $[-1,1]$ are studied when $\nu$ is a linear combination of a generalized Jacobi weight and finitely many Dirac deltas in $[-1,1]$. We prove some weighted norm inequalities for the partial sum operators $S_n$, their maximal operator $S^*$ and the commutator $[M_b, S_n]$, where $M_b$ denotes the operator of pointwise multiplication by b \in \BMO. We also prove some norm inequalities for $S_n$ when $\nu$ is a sum of a Laguerre weight on $\R^+$ and a positive mass on $0$