Evidence-based Recommendations on Periodontal Practice and the Management of Periodontal Patients During and After the COVID-19 Era: Challenging Infectious Diseases Spread by Airborne Transmission

Background: Periodontal care, which was completely suspended during the peak of the SARS-Cov-2 pandemic and was delayed and recurrently discontinued during the succeeding waves, must be safely provided in the COVID-19 era. Objectives: The study aimed to provide recommendations on periodontal practice, optimizing safety, ergonomics, and economic resources, and the management of periodontal patients, ensuring continuity, timing, and effectiveness of periodontal care in the COVID-19 era. Methods: Reported protocols for the dental practice in the context of the COVID-19 and current evidence on periodontitis treatment and prevention were reviewed. Results: Evidence-based recommendations on contamination control and ergonomic improvements for periodontal practice and the management of periodontal patients challenging COVID-19 and airborne infectious diseases have been provided. Conclusion: Due to the economic, ergonomic, and ethical concerns raised by limited periodontal care due to the SARS-Cov-2 pandemic, and awareness of other emerging airborne transmitted infections, the periodontal practice should integrate measures minimizing airborne cross-infections and optimizing time-space and economic resources. The management of periodontal patients in the COVID-19 era should comprise less complex treatments and more comprehensive and definitive approaches, reducing emergencies, session length and number, and, concurrently, extending the recall and maintenance intervals. Moreover, it should implement prevention strategies through teledentistry tools and apps, improving periodontal awareness and self-care, and also through the self-reporting of periodontitis and periodontal risk assessment tools, performing both "population-based" and "high-risk" surveillance of periodontitis. Finally, it should enhance inter-professional collaboration, through telehealth networks, especially targeting subjects at high-risk of both periodontitis and systemic disorders, each of the two variously linked to COVID-19 onset and worsening

Quantitative protein sensing with germanium THz-antennas manufactured using CMOS processes

The development of a CMOS manufactured THz sensing platform could enable the integration of state-of-the-art sensing principles with the mixed signal electronics ecosystem in small footprint, low-cost devices. To this aim, in this work we demonstrate a label-free protein sensing platform using highly doped germanium plasmonic antennas realized on Si and SOI substrates and operating in the THz range of the electromagnetic spectrum. The antenna response to different concentrations of BSA shows in both cases a linear response with saturation above 20 mg/mL. Ge antennas on SOI substrates feature a two-fold sensitivity as compared to conventional Si substrates, reaching a value of 6 GHz/(mg/mL), which is four-fold what reported using metal-based metamaterials. We believe that this result could pave the way to a low-cost lab-on-a-chip biosensing platform

Daily On-Line Set-Up Correction in 3D-Conformal Radiotherapy: Is It Feasible?

Aims and background The aim of this report was to investigate the feasibility in terms of treatment time prolongation of an on-line no-action level correction protocol, based on daily electronic portal image verification. Methods and study design The occupation of a linear accelerator (LINAC) delivering 3-D conformal treatments was monitored for two weeks (from Monday to Friday, 10 working days). An electronic portal image device I-View (Elekta, UK) was used for setup verification. Single-exposure portal images were acquired daily using the initial 8 monitor units delivered for each treatment field. Translational deviations of isocenter position larger than 5 mm or 7 mm, for radical or palliative treatments, respectively, were immediately corrected. In order to estimate the extra workload involved with the on-line protocol, the time required for isocenter check and table correction was specifically monitored. Results Forty-eight patients were treated. In all, 482 fractions had electronic portal images taken. Two hundred and forty-five setup corrections were made (50.8% of all fractions). The occupation of the LINAC lasted 106 h on the whole. Twelve h and 25 min (11.7% of LINAC occupation time) were spent for portal image verification and setup correction. On the average, 4.3 fractions per hour were carried out. Conclusions When used by trained therapists, ideally, portal imaging may be carried out before each fraction, requiring approximately 10% of LINAC occupation time

Anxiety and depression in keratotic oral lichen planus: a multicentric study from the SIPMO

Objectives: Oral lichen planus with exclusive keratotic reticular, papular, and/or plaque-like lesions (K-OLP) is a clinical pattern of OLP that may be associated with a complex symptomatology and psychological alteration. The aim of the study was to evaluate the prevalence of anxiety (A) and depression (D) in patients with K-OLP, analyzing the potential predictors which can affect mental health status. Methods: Three hundred K-OLP patients versus 300 healthy controls (HC) were recruited in 15 Italian universities. The Numeric Rating Scale (NRS), Total Pain Rating Index (T-PRI), and Hamilton Rating Scales for Depression and for Anxiety (HAM-D and HAM-A) were administered. Results: The K-OLP patients showed statistically higher scores in the NRS, T-PRI, HAM-D, and HAM-A compared with the HC (p-value < 0.001**). A and D were found in 158 (52.7%) and 148 (49.3%) K-OLP patients. Strong linear correlations were identified between HAM-A, HAM-D, NRS, T-PRI, and employment status and between HAM-D, HAM-A, NRS, T-PRI, employment status, and female gender. Multivariate logistic regression revealed that HAM-D and HAM-A showed the greatest increase in the R2 value for A and D in the K-OLP patients, respectively (DR2 = 55.5% p-value < 0.001**; DR2 = 56.5% p-value < 0.001**). Conclusions: The prevalence of A and D is higher in the K-OLP patients compared with the HC, also found in K-OLP subjects without pain, suggesting that the processing of pain may be in a certain way independent of the processing of mood. Clinical relevance: Mood disorders and pain assessment should be carefully performed in relation to K-OLP to obtain a complete analysis of the patients

Clinical features and outcomes of elderly hospitalised patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, heart failure or both

Background and objective: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and heart failure (HF) mutually increase the risk of being present in the same patient, especially if older. Whether or not this coexistence may be associated with a worse prognosis is debated. Therefore, employing data derived from the REPOSI register, we evaluated the clinical features and outcomes in a population of elderly patients admitted to internal medicine wards and having COPD, HF or COPD + HF. Methods: We measured socio-demographic and anthropometric characteristics, severity and prevalence of comorbidities, clinical and laboratory features during hospitalization, mood disorders, functional independence, drug prescriptions and discharge destination. The primary study outcome was the risk of death. Results: We considered 2,343 elderly hospitalized patients (median age 81&nbsp;years), of whom 1,154 (49%) had COPD, 813 (35%) HF, and 376 (16%) COPD + HF. Patients with COPD + HF had different characteristics than those with COPD or HF, such as a higher prevalence of previous hospitalizations, comorbidities (especially chronic kidney disease), higher respiratory rate at admission and number of prescribed drugs. Patients with COPD + HF (hazard ratio HR 1.74, 95% confidence intervals CI 1.16-2.61) and patients with dementia (HR 1.75, 95% CI 1.06-2.90) had a higher risk of death at one year. The Kaplan-Meier curves showed a higher mortality risk in the group of patients with COPD + HF for all causes (p = 0.010), respiratory causes (p = 0.006), cardiovascular causes (p = 0.046) and respiratory plus cardiovascular causes (p = 0.009). Conclusion: In this real-life cohort of hospitalized elderly patients, the coexistence of COPD and HF significantly worsened prognosis at one year. This finding may help to better define the care needs of this population

COVID-19: The Patients' Perceived Impact on Dental Care

 The present study aims to investigate the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on people's mental and physical balance, oral hygiene habits, type of diet, perceived safety of returning to the dentist, and aesthetics with the use of masks

Acamprosate does not antagonise the discriminative stimulus properties of amphetamine and morphine in rats

Acamprosate (calcium acetylhomotaurinate) is a GABA derivative that prevents drinking relapses in a significant number of alcoholics. Since little is known about the interaction of acamprosate with other addictive drugs, we studied the effects of this agent (as sodium salt) in two groups of rats trained to discriminate, respectively, morphine (1.7 mg kg(-1) i.p.) or amphetamine (0.5 mg kg(-1) i.p.) from solvent in a two-lever fixed ratio 30 operant behaviour reinforced by water access. Accordingly to the finding that acamprosate inhibits the action of excitatory aminoacids, its effects were compared with those of dizocilpine (MK-801), an NMDA antagonist. Results show that acamprosate (170 and 320 mg kg(-1) i.p.) produced a slight, and not significant, shift to the left of generalization curves of both morphine and amphetamine without affecting response rates. In contrast, MK-801 potentiated response rate effects of both morphine and amphetamine without affecting their generalization curves. As far as discriminative stimuli participate in the relapsing process of addiction, our results do not predict a role of acamprosate in the prevention of amphetamine or morphine abuse relapsing. (C) 1999 Academic Press

Per Antonino Terranova. Improvvisazioni tra architettura e paesaggi metropolitani

Il 2 aprile Tonino avrebbe compiuto 70 anni. Abbiamo deciso di cogliere l’occasione per ricordarlo a pochi mesi dalla sua scomparsa, insieme ai colleghi, agli amici, agli studenti e a tutti coloro con i quali Tonino ha condiviso ricerche, passioni, dubbi, inquietudini, curiosità. Quel giorno ci ritroveremo alla Casa dell’Architettura, per festeggiare l’intellettuale, il docente, il maestro, il critico, l’architetto attraverso i suoi scritti, i suoi progetti, le sue figure. Non una commemorazione, ma una lettura fatta a più voci con le parole e le immagini che Tonino ci ha lasciato, ricombinate in un collage alla maniera dei surrealisti, così come lui amava fare. Senz’altro Tonino ne sarebbe contento e noi già lo sentiamo irrompere con la sua risata..

Prevalence of dental anomalies in a sample of growing subjects: a retrospective study

BACKGROUND: dental anomalies are a group of disorders characterized by alterations in tooth number, shape, size, structure, development, and timing of eruption due to genetic and environmental factors. OBJECTIVES: to identify the prevalence of dental anomalies in a large sample of non-orthodontic subjects. DESIGN: a retrospective chart review was conducted based on digital panoramic radiographs by two examiners who assessed the presence of displacement of the maxillary canines (DMC), impacted teeth (IT), tooth agenesis (TA), supernumerary/supplementary teeth (ST), and tooth transpositions (TT). SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS: radiographs of subjects aged between 8 and 18 years were analysed. A chi2 test was employed to assess possible associations between the number and type of dental anomalies and patients' gender. When an association was present, a binary logistic regression was conducted to calculate the odds ratio between the variables. The significance level was set at p&lt;0.05. RESULTS: a total of 1,124 subjects (25.7%) showed at least one dental anomaly. DMC (12.1%) and IT (12%) were the most frequent dental anomalies. The most represented impacted teeth were the upper canine (9.2%) and the upper central incisor (1.3%). TA was detected in 296 radiographs (6.8%), with 134 showing two or more TA. The prevalence of ST and TT in the total sample was 2.2% and 0.7%, respectively. Associations were found between ST and IT, between TA and DMC, and between TA and IT. CONCLUSIONS: the results obtained encourage the radiographic investigation of dental anomalies at an early stage