The Hidradenitis suppurativa patient journey in Italy: current status, unmet needs and opportunities.

BACKGROUND: Hidradenitis suppurativa (HS) is a chronic, progressive inflammatory, debilitating, follicular disease of the skin with a reported incidence of less than 1% in the general population. Diagnosis of HS may typically be delayed for years, and even when diagnosed, is challenging to treat. Thus, HS has considerable negative impact on patient quality of life. OBJECTIVES: To describe the HS patient journey in Italy, identify unmet needs and provide a proposal for integrated patient care. METHODS: A multidisciplinary panel of leading Italian experts met to evaluate routine clinical practice and patient experience, and analyse the available scientific evidence on HS. RESULTS: A comprehensive map of the journey of the HS patient in Italy was built based on integrated data obtained from clinical practice and patient experience. The journey is non-linear and can be grouped into four broad stages that are somewhat overlapping and intersecting: (i) onset to diagnosis; (ii) circle of visits; (iii) circle of treatments; (iv) living with HS. Several unmet needs were identified that included greater awareness of disease by both healthcare practitioners and patients. CONCLUSION: Improved disease awareness can be addressed through continuing medical education for physicians and development of educational materials for patients, in addition to greater utilization of social networks. Moreover, the development of integrated treatment centres was considered a worthwhile goal, and would offer patients the possibility to receive multidisciplinary care, ideally with dermatologists coordinating treatment, along with surgeons, psychologists, endocrinologists, gastroenterologists, pain specialists, gynaecologists and paediatricians as needed. Lastly, standardized management protocols for HS are also needed.

Hard X-rays as pump and probe of atomic motion in oxide glasses.

Nowadays powerful X-ray sources like synchrotrons and free-electron lasers are considered as ultimate tools for probing microscopic properties in materials. However, the correct interpretation of such experiments requires a good understanding on how the beam affects the properties of the sample, knowledge that is currently lacking for intense X-rays. Here we use X-ray photon correlation spectroscopy to probe static and dynamic properties of oxide and metallic glasses. We find that although the structure does not depend on the flux, strong fluxes do induce a non-trivial microscopic motion in oxide glasses, whereas no such dependence is found for metallic glasses. These results show that high fluxes can alter dynamical properties in hard materials, an effect that needs to be considered in the analysis of X-ray data but which also gives novel possibilities to study materials properties since the beam can not only be used to probe the dynamics but also to pump it.

[Hematologic parameters of the white donkeys of Asinara]. / Costanti ematiche dell'asinello bianco dell'Asinara.

In 14 albino donkeys (6 males and 8 females) aged 1-12 years, about 25% of the whole population, 30 blood parameters were determined, with automatic equipment, monthly, for 4 months. No significant differences between sexes or compared with other donkey breeds were found, in spite of the particular characteristics of the population and of their environment.