Are Italian medical societies bridging the distance from citizen and patients' associations? Results of a survey.

Introduction: In the framework of PartecipaSalute--an Italian research project aimed to involve lay people, patients' associations and scientific-medical representatives on the health debate --we carried out a survey with the Italian Federation of Medical Societies. The aims of the survey were to know medical societies attitude vs. patients involvement in research activities and healthcare setting and to find out possible projects conducted in partnership with patients associations.

Lifetime physical activity and prostate cancer risk.

The purpose of our study was to investigate the relation in between physical activity in different periods of life at work and in leisure-time and prostate cancer risk. We conducted a case-control study on prostate cancer in Italy between 1991 and 2002, which included 1,294 incident cases of histologically confirmed prostate cancer below 75 years of age and 1,451 controls, who were admitted to hospital for acute nonneoplastic conditions. Odds ratios (OR) of prostate cancer according to physical activity in different periods of life were obtained by unconditional multiple logistic regression models, including terms for age, study centre, education, social class, body mass index, energy intake, family history and other selected covariates.