Capturing drinking and nightlife behaviours and their social and physical context with a smartphone application: Investigation of users' experience and reactivity

Contains fulltext : 215381.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Closed access)Background: Many addictive behaviours are influenced by the context in which they occur, but methods for simultaneously capturing the characteristics of a behaviour and its context are scarce. This study describes a smartphone application developed to document young adults' nightlife and drinking behaviours and investigates its impact on participants' lives. Methods: 241 participants, aged 16-25 (46.5% women), were asked to document 10 Friday and Saturday nights over seven weekends. Using their own smartphones, they documented the beverages consumed and the social and physical context by means of questionnaires, photos, and video clips, while phone sensors (e.g., GPS, Bluetooth, accelerometer) were running in the background. Quantitative and additional qualitative data (40 in-depth interviews) were used to investigate response burden, assessment reactivity, and disruption of usual activities among three participant groups, arranged according to the number of reports submitted during the study. Results: 69% of participants documented 10 or more nights. Compared with the most frequent contributors, regular and irregular participants reported similar numbers of non-alcoholic drinks per night, but lower numbers of alcoholic drinks. Within each group, the number of drinks consumed did not change over the course of the study. Taking pictures and video clips was sometimes perceived as inappropriate and potentially disruptive to the ongoing social activities. Conclusion: The application required a high but sustainable degree of commitment and did not induce reactivity. The method might be adapted to study other context-dependent addictive behaviours. Measures to decrease response burden and disruption of usual activities are proposed.14 p

Post‐load insulin resistance is an independent predictor of hepatic fibrosis in virus C chronic hepatitis and in non‐alcoholic fatty liver disease

BACKGROUND: Insulin resistance is a significant risk factor for hepatic fibrosis in patients with both non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and chronic hepatitis C (CHC), either directly or by favouring hepatic steatosis. Several methods are available to assess insulin resistance, but their impact on this issue has never been evaluated. AIMS: To determine the relative contribution of steatosis, metabolic abnormalities and insulin resistance, measured by different basal and post-load parameters, to hepatic fibrosis in CHC and in NAFLD patients. METHODS: In 90 patients with CHC and 90 pair-matched patients with NAFLD, the degree of basal insulin resistance (by the homeostasis model assessment, (HOMA)) and post-load insulin sensitivity (by the oral glucose insulin sensitivity (OGIS) index) was assessed, together with the features of the metabolic syndrome according to Adult Treatment Panel III definition. Data were correlated with hepatic histopathology. RESULTS: The prevalence of basal insulin resistance (HOMA values >75th percentile of normal) was 23.3% in CHC patients and 57.8% in NAFLD, but it increased to 28.8 and 67.8% when measured by post-load insulin resistance (OGIS <25th percentile). In a multivariate model, after adjustment for age, gender and body mass index, OGIS was a predictor of severe fibrosis in CHC and in NAFLD patients, independently of steatosis. An OGIS value below the cut-off of the 25th percentile increased the likelihood ratio of severe fibrosis by a factor of 1.5-2 and proved to be a more sensitive and generally more specific test than HOMA-R for the identification of subjects with severe fibrosis both in NAFLD and in CHC. CONCLUSIONS: Post-load insulin resistance (OGIS <9.8 mg/kg/min) is associated with severe hepatic fibrosis in both NAFLD and CHC patients, and may help identify subjects at risk of progressive disease

Humanitas. Attualit\ue0 di Matteo Ricci: testi, fortuna, interpretazioni.

Humanitas \ue8 il termine simbolo dello straordinario incontro tra civilt\ue0 europea e cinese avvenuto ad opera di Matteo Ricci tra il 1582 e il 1610. Il gesuita maceratese comprese subito che la humanitas rinascimentale e classica degli europei corrispondeva alla perfezione umana e sociale (ren) della tradizione confuciana, e lavor\uf2 in modo instancabile al servizio di una sola e universale umanit\ue0. In questo volume sono raccolti diciotto interventi inediti e innovativi volti a restituire in modo esauriente la fisionomia dell\u2019eredit\ue0 ricciana. Cinque saggi illustrano temi relativi alla struttura e alla fruizione delle opere del gesuita: dalla storia del Grand Ricci, il maggiore strumento ora esistente per la traduzione del cinese classico, al Dizionario portoghese-cinese di Ricci e Ruggeri, ai progressi nell\u2019interpretazione della scrittura cinese durante la missione di Ricci fino a una prima e nuova lettura linguistico-stilistica delle opere italiane. Cinque studi sono dedicati alla \u201cQuestione dei riti cinesi\u201d: una nuova interpretazione degli inizi della controversia, un\u2019ampia e originale ricognizione delle figure rilevanti di Giovanni Laureati e Teodorico Pedrini, una ricostruzione degli scritti e dei giudizi di Leibniz sulla disputa che stava di nuovo separando Roma e Pechino e, infine, un\u2019interpretazione della Instructio con la quale Pio XII pose fine nel 1939 all\u2019annosa questione. I saggi rimanenti affrontano il tema dell\u2019attualit\ue0 di Ricci, sia in relazione alle tracce storiche concrete del suo lavoro, sia in rapporto a ci\uf2 che egli non vide della Cina. Il nodo centrale della sua esperienza cinese \ue8 ravvisato nel problematico rapporto tra cultura ed evangelizzazione e nel primato che la prima, per diverse ragioni, esercit\uf2 sulla seconda

Retrospective, observational, multicentre study on an Italian population affected by chronic hepatitis C who failed to clear HCV-RNA after the combined therapy (PEG-IFN and ribavirin): NADIR study.

There is a lack of information on the characteristics of patients with chronic hepatitis C virus infection (HCV) who fail to respond to antiviral treatment. We studied HCV-positive subjects with chronic liver diseases treated with pegylated-interferon (PEG-IFN) and ribavirin (RBV) who failed to clear HCV in routine clinical practice. A total of 2150 consecutive adult patients treated with PEG-IFN plus RBV therapy in 46 Italian centres between 1 July 2004, and 30 June 2005, were studied. Of the 2150 patients, 923 (42.9%) (M/F 585/335, mean age 54.8 years) failed to achieve a serum HCV-RNA clearance. Of these 923 patients, 429 (46.5%) were nonresponders, 298 (32.3%) relapsers, 168 (18.2%) drop-outs for noncompliance or adverse events and 28 (3.0%) were lost during follow-up. Overall, 642 (70.6%) patients received adequate therapy (defined as more than 80% of the drug doses for >80% of the time). Genotypes 1-4 were observed in 76.9% of cases; genotypes 2-3 in 21.2% and mixed in 1.9%, respectively. Multiple logistic regression analysis identified genotypes 1 and 4 as the sole independent predictors of the likelihood of nonresponse to therapy compared with relapse (OR: 4.38; 95% CI = 2.28-8.4). Age older than 65 years was the sole independent factor associated with no adherence to therapy (OR: 2.22; 95% CI = 1.36-3.62). Patients who fail to respond to treatment are a nonhomogeneous population with different features, and the sole factor that discriminates nonresponse from relapse is the distribution of genotypes 1-4. Co-morbidities are unable to determine the type of treatment failure and inadequate adherence to therapy mostly affects patients older than 65 years of age