Promoting health and preventing non-communicable diseases: evaluation of the adherence of the Italian population to the Mediterranean Diet by using the PREDIMED questionnaire.

Abstract: A health promotion program was conducted in the Veneto Region in Italy. Participants were screened for non-communicable diseases and were referred to the nutrition clinic. The aim of this study was to assess the adherence to the Mediterranean diet in the Italian population by using the "PREvención con DIeta MEDiterránea" questionnaire. The data showed that 63% of the participants were overweight, 57% presented hypercholesterolemia, 36% were hypertensive and 43% had high blood glucose levels. The results highlighted a low consumption of protective foods against non-communicable diseases such as fruit, vegetables, fresh fish, legumes and oily dried fruit. Overall, only 6% of the subjects who visited the nutritional clinic had the maximum adherence to the Mediterranean diet, 73% had an average adherence, followed by 21% with low adherence. Multivariable analysis between risk factors and socio-demographic characteristics and the adherence to Mediterranean diet revealed that male gender relates directly (p =0.002, AOR = 2.95) to a low adherence. There are three criteria in the questionnaire for a point in favour of Mediterranean diet which we believe to be inadequate, as they are not in accordance with the Italian guidelines for healthy eating. The "PREvención con DIeta MEDiterránea" questionnaire, if associated with a food frequency questionnaire or a food intake record, could become a useful tool for nutritional counseling in our Country.

[Danazol: an alternative in postcoital contraception]. / Danazolo: un'alternativa nell'intercezione post-coitale.

Personal experience with postcoital contraception through the use of Danazol is reported.

PIP: During a 5 year period 62 patients requesting post coital contraception were give 2 doses of 200 mg danazol for 5 days after being informed of possible side effects and about the lack of experimental data on its effectiveness. All patients were advised to make notes about side effects, spotting, and the nature, quantity, and duration of menstrual flow, 35 of the women were nulliparae and 27 pluriparae aged 16 to 42, 52 had had unprotected sexual activity and 10 rupture of the condom that motivated them to seek contraception. Nausea occurred in 18, headache in 3, and mastodynia in 5 cases. 57 patients reported regular, 2 early, and 3 late menstruation. Hypomenorrhea occurred in 3 and menorrhagia in 9 cases. The administration of danazol took place between the 11th and 15th day of the menstrual cycle, but it proved ineffective in 1 case when the drug was given on the 20th day, however, this may have been attributable to previous unprotected sex. Danazol proved to be a good post-coital contraceptive with a high rate of efficacy and good tolerability. Treatment exceeding 5 days produced only a minor emotional tension in 4 patients.

Singular value decomposition analysis of protein sequence alignment score data.

One of the standard tools for the analysis of data arranged in matrix form is singular value decomposition (SVD). Few applications to genomic data have been reported to date mainly for the analysis of gene expression microarray data. We review SVD properties, examine mathematical terms and assumptions implicit in the SVD formalism, and show that SVD can be applied to the analysis of matrices representing pairwise alignment scores between large sets of protein sequences. In particular, we illustrate SVD capabilities for data dimension reduction and for clustering protein sequences. A comparison is performed between SVD-generated clusters of proteins and annotation reported in the SWISS-PROT Database for a set of protein sequences forming the calycin superfamily, entailing all entries corresponding to the lipocalin, cytosolic fatty acid-binding protein, and avidin-streptavidin Prosite patterns.

[Odontogenic cysts. A case of keratocysts]. / Cisti odontogene. Un caso di cheratocisti.

The Authors, after a clinic and diagnostic classification of keratocysts, described a case of keratocyst treated by surgical enucleation.