Salute & sanità – Pagina 218

How to regenerate a broken heart

12 Mar 2014Cristina Da RoldLascia un commento

The epidemics of heart failure (HF) represents a challenge for the National Health System: despite advances over the past 30 years, the prognosis for patients who are admitted to hospital with HF remains poor, with a 5 year mortality that is nearly 50%, worse than that for patients with breast or colon cancer. The incidence of HF is dramatically increasing at an unanticipated speed emphasizing the need for novel strategies aiming at the identification of the cause of this devastating disease.

In the last few years, the Department of Cardiovascular Sciences of Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore – Policlinico A. Gemelli, directed by Prof. Filippo Crea, contributed with original research programs in this field. Therefore, the Department has joined the European consortium that designed the clinical trial BAMI (The Effect of intracoronary Reinfusion of Bone Marrow-derived Mononuclear Cells on All Cause Mortality in Acute Myocardial Infarction ), and it will conduct the study as a coordinating center for Italy and European leading center for substudies.

Moreover, as the population continues to age, the demand for costly, age-associated health care will increase rapidly, since elderly individuals are at highest risk for HF. The European program “Horizon 2020: Health, demographic change and well-being” indicated the development of new therapeutic strategies that can bring a benefit in terms of survival and a reduction in the rate of hospitalization in patients with heart failure as an inescapable challenge. In recent years, therefore, regenerative medicine has been seen as a possible resource that can provide a convincing answer to this important socio-medical problem.

Diabete: un nuovo portale made in San Raffaele

10 Mar 201410 Mar 2014Cristina Da RoldLascia un commento

Sicurezza alimentare: il nostro paese tra i migliori

6 Mar 2014Cristina Da RoldLascia un commento

Reblogged from Scienza in Rete

I paesi europei “industrializzati” sono davvero più immuni rispetto agli altri quanto a sicurezza alimentare? A guardare le statistiche sembrerebbe di no. Anzi, in molti casi la maglia nera per numero di infezioni batteriche da cibo nell’uomo spetta agli alfieri dell’Ue, Germania in primis, mentre l’Italia pare cavarsela un po’ meglio.
Questi i risultati che emergono da un dossier pubblicato lo scorso 19 febbraio dall’EFSA (Autorità Europea per la Sicurezza Alimentare) sui focolai delle malattie a trasmissione alimentare in Europa nel 2012.

Il report, che viene pubblicato annualmente, raccoglie tutte le informazioni prodotte da ognuno dei 27 stati membri dell’Unione Europea a proposito delle cosiddette zoonosi, malattie trasmissibili direttamente o indirettamente tra animali ed esseri umani, ad esempio tramite il consumo di cibi contaminati o il contatto con animali infetti.

INFN goes overseas

28 Feb 2014Cristina Da RoldLascia un commento

Reblogged from Science on the Net

Between 5 and 6th February, INFN met the delegations from the American Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) in order to establish a new scientific cooperation among Italy and USA. We talked about this meeting with Antonio Masiero, the INFN Deputy Director. “The collaboration between these two countries is excellent,” says Masiero, “and at the moment it involves four research projects, which are the topics we have discussed two weeks ago in Washington.”

The first project concerns the neutrino physics and takes place at Fermilab. It is composed by two experiments involving Italian physicists: a short baseline experiment and a long baseline experiment, which are respectively the first and the second phase of the project. The American interest in a collaboration with INFN is due to the Italian knowledge around liquid argon and its use as a target for particle detectors. “In Italy we have worked largely with liquid argon at Gran Sasso Laboratories, under the guide of Carlo Rubbia,” explains Masiero. “Our experiment is called ICARUS and it represents the best example of using liquid argon as a target for particle detectors. Thus, Americans need our know-how.”