Assessment of SARS-CoV-2 infection through rapid serology testing in the homeless population in the City of Rome, Italy. Preliminary results

Background: The development of COVID-19 pandemic has affected all segments of the population; however, it had a significant impact on vulnerable subjects, such as in people experiencing homelessness. The aim of this study was to evaluate the prevalence of COVID-19 spread in homeless persons in the city of Rome, Italy.  Design and Methods: Patients included in the study underwent a clinical evaluation and rapid antibody analysis on capillary blood for the presence of immunoglobulin G (IgG) and immunoglobulin M (IgM) antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 virus. Symptomatic patients were not included in the screening and immediately referred to local hospitals for further evaluation.Results: One-hundred seventy-three patients of both sexes were tested for SARS-CoV-2 infection through rapid serological test. Age range was 8-80 years; people came from 35 different countries of origin and 4 continents. Test results were negative for most patients (170-98.2%); two patients had positive IgM (1.2%) and one patient had positive IgG (0.6%).Conclusions: Our study is the first to evaluate the prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 infection in people experiencing homelessness in the city of Rome, Italy. Most patients were negative for COVID-19, although several factors may have had an impact on this result, such as the exclusion of symptomatic patients, the limited sensitivity of rapid serological tests in the initial stage of infection and the prevention measures adopted in these populations. Larger studies on fragile populations are needed to prevent and intercept new clusters of infection in the upcoming months

An extreme-scale virtual screening platform for drug discovery

Virtual screening is one of the early stages that aims to select a set of promising ligands from a vast chemical library. Molecular Docking is a crucial task in the process of drug discovery and it consists of the estimation of the position of a molecule inside the docking site. In the contest of urgent computing, we designed from scratch the EXSCALATE molecular docking platform to benefit from heterogeneous computation nodes and to avoid scaling issues

Hyaluronic acid alone versus hyaluronic acid associated with adelmidrol for intra-articular treatment of knee osteoarthritis: a long-term follow-up

Background: Hyaluronic acid (HA) has been used for many years for intra-articular treatment of knee osteoarthritis with satisfactory results. HA associated with Adelmidrol – an anti-neuroinflammatory compound – have been only recently introduced in orthopedic clinical practice with good preliminary results. Objective: To investigate whether HA associated with Adelmidrol provides better results than HA alone. Methods: Two cohorts of patients with moderate knee osteoarthritis were treated. Cohort 1 received 5 weekly intra-articular injections of HA during 2017 while Cohort 2, 4 weekly intra-articular injections of HA associated with Adelmidrol during 2018. The patients of the two Cohorts were assessed by WOMAC scale, SF-12 questionnaire and PGIC scale at 1 week (T0), 6 months (T1), 1 year (T2), and 2 years (T3) after the end of treatment. All the data were statistically analyzed. A p-value of <0.05 was considered statistically significant. Results: According to the WOMAC Scale Cohort 1 had higher mean scores than Cohort 2 at each follow-up time, with a statistically significant difference between the two cohorts at T3 (p<0.03) for all the WOMAC components, except for Stiffness. WOMAC Total mean score worsened statistically significantly only in Cohort 1, from T1 to T3 (T2 vs T1: p=0.0033; T3 vs T2: p=0.0007). The same happened for WOMAC Physical Function (T2 vs T1: p=0.0146; T3 vs T2: p=0.0046) and WOMAC Pain (T2 vs T1: p=0.0004; T3 vs T2: p=0.0002). WOMAC Stiffness worsened statistically significantly in Cohort 1 from T2 to T3 (T3 vs T2: p=0.0041), while in Cohort 2 no change on WOMAC scale was statistically significant at any time-point, for any components. The mean scores of the SF-12 questionnaire were better in Cohort 2 than in Cohort 1 at each follow-up time for both the Physical and the Mental components, with a statistically significant difference between the two groups for the latter, at T0 (p=0.0001). In both cohorts the mean score of the Physical component decreased from T0 to T3, but the difference was not statistically significant between the two groups (p=0.25). The mean score of the Mental component slightly increased in Cohort 1 and decreased in Cohort 2, without statistically significant differences between the two groups at any time-point. PGIC showed that Cohort 2 scored significantly better than Cohort 1 at T3 (p=0.0336). Conclusions: Overall, HA associated with Adelmidrol gave better long-term results than HA alone