The Italian arm of the PREPARE study: an international project to evaluate and license a maternal vaccine against group B streptococcus.

BACKGROUND: Group B streptococcus (GBS) is a leading cause of sepsis, pneumonia and meningitis in infants, with long term neurodevelopmental sequelae. GBS may be associated with poor pregnancy outcomes, including spontaneous abortion, stillbirth and preterm birth. Intrapartum antibiotic prophylaxis (IAP) is currently the only way to prevent early-onset disease (presenting at 0 to 6 days of life), although it has no impact on the disease presenting over 6 days of life and its implementation is challenging in resource poor countries. A maternal vaccine against GBS could reduce all GBS manifestations as well as improve pregnancy outcomes, even in low-income countries. MAIN BODY: The term "PREPARE" designates an international project aimed at developing a maternal vaccination platform to test vaccines against neonatal GBS infections by maternal immunization. It is a non-profit, multi-center, interventional and experimental study (promoted by the St George University of London. [UK]) with the aim of developing a maternal vaccination platform, determining pregnancy outcomes, and defining the extent of GBS infections in children and mothers in Africa. PREPARE also aims to estimate the protective serocorrelates against the main GBS serotypes that cause diseases in Europe and Africa and to conduct two trials on candidate GBS vaccines. PREPARE consists of 6 work packages. In four European countries (Italy, UK, Netherlands, France) the recruitment of cases and controls will start in 2020 and will end in 2022. The Italian PREPARE network includes 41 centers. The Italian network aims to collect: GBS isolates from infants with invasive disease, maternal and neonatal sera (cases); cord sera and GBS strains from colonized mothers whose infants do not develop GBS infection (controls). SHORT CONCLUSION: PREPARE will contribute information on protective serocorrelates against the main GBS serotypes that cause diseases in Europe and Africa. The vaccine that will be tested by the PREPARE study could be an effective strategy to prevent GBS disease

Le risque de thrombose veineuse profonde lors d'un voyage en avion : prévention et conseil à l'officine = Risk of deep venous thrombosis during an air flight: Prevention and counselling at the counter

International audienceLe trafic aérien mondial avoisine, selon les années, 2,3 milliards de passagers. La multiplication du nombre de personnes à risque thrombo-embolique, couplée avec les complications potentiellement graves de la thrombose veineuse profonde, donne au pharmacien d'officine sa place pour prodiguer quelques conseils préventifs simples mais efficaces = Worldwide air traffic reaches about 2.3 billion passengers per year. The increasing number of persons at thrombo-embolic risk, together with potentially severe or fatal complications of deep venous thrombosis, suggests community pharmacists can give basic preventive advice to persons identified as at risk

Preparation of lectin-vicilin nanoparticle conjugates using the carbodiimide coupling technique

International audienc

Gliadin nanoparticles for the controlled release of all-trans-retinoic acid

International audienc

Preparation of small-sized particles from vicilin (vegetal protein from Pisum sativum L.) by coacervation

This work examines the feasibility of preparing micro- and nanoparticles (drug carriers) from vicilin (a vegetal storage protein from Pisum sativum)

Improvement of an encapsulation process for the preparation of pro- and prebiotics-loaded bioadhesive microparticles by using experimental design

International audienceThe purpose of this study was to design a new vaginal bioadhesive delivery system based on pectinate-hyaluronic acid microparticles for probiotics and prebiotics encapsulation. Probiotic strains and prebiotic were selected for their abilities to restore vaginal ecosystem. Microparticles were produced by emulsification/gelation method using calcium as cross-linking agent. In the first step, preliminary experiments were conducted to study the influence of the main formulation and process parameters on the size distribution of unloaded microparticles. Rheological measurements were also performed to investigate the bioadhesive properties of the gels used to obtain the final microparticles. Afterwards an experimental design was performed to determine the operating conditions suitable to obtain bioadhesive microparticles containing probiotics and prebiotics. Experimental design allowed us to define two important parameters during the microencapsulation process: the stirring rate during the emulsification step and the pectin concentration. The final microparticles had a mean diameter of 137 μm and allowed a complete release of probiotic strains after 16 h in a simulated vaginal fluid at +37 °C