Floating macro litter in European rivers - top items

The JRC exploratory project RIMMEL provides information about litter, mainly plastic waste, entering the European Seas through river systems. RIMMEL has collected data on riverine floating macro litter inputs to the sea. Data acquisition was based on the Riverine Litter Observation Network (RiLON) activities, which collected data from rivers in the European marine basins over a period of one year (September 2016 – September 2017). Data was collected by visual observations and documented with the JRC Floating Litter Monitoring Application for mobile devices, allowing a harmonized reporting, compatible with the MSFD Master List of Categories for Litter Items. This report includes the Top Items lists of riverine floating macro litter, based on the total amount of litter items identified during RiLON activities and ranked by abundance. Top Items lists have been elaborated considering the whole database for the European Seas and further detailed for each individual European regional sea: Baltic Sea, Black Sea, Mediterranean Sea and North-East Atlantic. The North-East Atlantic and the Mediterranean Sea regions showed similar litter categories in their Top 20 Items. These two regions provided most of the available data, influencing the general Top Items list. In the Black Sea and Baltic Sea regions, where data availability was limited, the Top Items lists showed more differences among the different regions. Overall, the general Top Items list for the European Seas showed a predominance of plastic item categories (artificial polymer materials). As a whole, plastic items made up to 80.8% of all objects, with plastic and polystyrene fragments comprising 45% of the identified items in the database. Additionally, Single Use Plastics such as bottles, cover/packaging and bags were also ranked among the most frequently found floating litter. The similarities in the Top 10 and Top 20 items for the different regions, and the appearance of Single Use Plastics scoring high in the ranking, support the need for common actions against plastic pollution at EU level.JRC.D.2-Water and Marine Resource

Posttraumatic dystonia and hemiplegic migraine: different expressions of neuronal hyperexcitability?

The development of focal hand dystonia after a traumatic injury of the central or the peripheral nervous system is a rare condition with multifactorial predisposing factors. We report on a patient who developed focal dystonia of the left hand after a cervical whiplash injury. Magnetic resonance imaging did not show cerebral or spinal lesions, whereas a brain F-FDG PET scan revealed hypometabolism of the right primary sensory-motor cortex extending to the inferior and superior parietal lobule. The patient had a history of recurrent migraine attacks. Four months before the whiplash injury, she had transient dystonic posture of the left hand during a hemiplegic migraine attack. Brain magnetic resonance imaging scan and neurovascular investigations were negative. Among the predisposing factors to the development of trauma-induced dystonia, a putative role of neuronal hyperexcitability, shared by migraine and dystonia, is discussed

The pan - COVID - AGICT study. The impact of COVID-19 pandemic on surgically treated pancreatic cancer patients. A multicentric Italian study

Background: In this article we aimed to perform a subgroup analysis using data from the COVID-AGICT study, to investigate the perioperative outcomes of patients undergoing surgery for pancreatic cancers (PC) during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: The primary endpoint of the study was to find out any difference in the tumoral stage of surgically treated PC patients between 2019 and 2020. Surgical and oncological outcomes of the entire cohort of patients were also appraised dividing the entire peri-pandemic period into six three-month timeframes to balance out the comparison between 2019 and 2020. Results: Overall, a total of 1815 patients were surgically treated during 2019 and 2020 in 14 Italian surgical Units. In 2020, the rate of patients treated with an advanced pathological stage was not different compared to 2019 (p = 0.846). During the pandemic, neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NCT) has dropped significantly (6.2% vs 21.4%, p < 0.001) and, for patients who didn't undergo NCT, the latency between diagnosis and surgery was shortened (49.58 +/- 37 days vs 77.40 +/- 83 days, p < 0.001). During 2020 there was a significant increase in minimally invasive procedures (p < 0.001). The rate of postoperative complication was the same in the two years but during 2020 there was an increase of the medical ones (19% vs 16.1%, p = 0.001). Conclusions: The post-pandemic dramatic modifications in healthcare provision, in Italy, did not significantly impair the clinical history of PC patients receiving surgical resection. The present study is one of the largest reports available on the argument and may provide the basis for long-term analyses

The COVID - AGICT study: COVID–19 and advanced gastro-intestinal cancer surgical treatment. A multicentric Italian study on the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic impact on gastro-intestinal cancers surgical treatment during the 2020. Analysis of perioperative and short-term oncological outcomes

Background This Italian multicentric retrospective study aimed to investigate the possible changes in outcomes of patients undergoing surgery for gastrointestinal cancers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Method Our primary endpoint was to determine whether the pandemic scenario increased the rate of patients with colorectal, gastroesophageal, and pancreatic cancers resected at an advanced stage in 2020 compared to 2019. Considering different cancer staging systems, we divided tumors into early stages and advanced stages, using pathological outcomes. Furthermore, to assess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on surgical outcomes, perioperative data of both 2020 and 2019 were also examined. Results Overall, a total of 8250 patients, 4370 (53%) and 3880 (47%) were surgically treated during 2019 and 2020 respectively, in 62 Italian surgical Units. In 2020, the rate of patients treated with an advanced pathological stage was not different compared to 2019 (P = 0.25). Nevertheless, the analysis of quarters revealed that in the second half of 2020 the rate of advanced cancer resected, tented to be higher compared with the same months of 2019 (P = 0.05). During the pandemic year ‘Charlson Comorbidity Index score of cancer patients (5.38 ± 2.08 vs 5.28 ± 2.22, P = 0.036), neoadjuvant treatments (23.9% vs. 19.5%, P < 0.001), rate of urgent diagnosis (24.2% vs 20.3%, P < 0.001), colorectal cancer urgent resection (9.4% vs. 7.37, P < 0.001), and the rate of positive nodes on the total nodes resected per surgery increased significantly (7 vs 9% - 2.02 ± 4.21 vs 2.39 ± 5.23, P < 0.001). Conclusions Although the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic did not influence the pathological stage of colorectal, gastroesophageal, and pancreatic cancers at the time of surgery, our study revealed that the pandemic scenario negatively impacted on several perioperative and post-operative outcomes

Erratum to: Guidelines for the use and interpretation of assays for monitoring autophagy (3rd edition) (Autophagy, 12, 1, 1-222, 10.1080/15548627.2015.1100356

non present