Prevalence of child sexual abuse: a comparison among 4 Italian epidemiological studies.

Although many epidemiological studies defining child sexual abuse prevalence rates in many countries of the world are now available, Italy presents a lack of data regarding this specific issue. Only recently some attempts to define the epidemiology of this public health problem have been tried. Between 2003 and 2010, the Department of Public Health at University of Milan was in charge of one of the more important study of this kind in Italy, involving almost 3000 students aged 18 attending secondary schools in the City of Milan who filled out an anonymous questionnaire aiming at detecting their previous experiences of sexual victimization during childhood and adolescence.

Air pollution and respiratory drug use in the city of Como, Italy.

Unlabelled: STUDY OBJECTIVE AND SETTING: Particulate air pollution has a known negative effect on human respiratory health, often studied with hospital admissions, emergency room access, or mortality as health indicators. We evaluate respiratory drug dispensing data as health indicators for the effects of total suspended particles (TSP) air pollution in the city of Como (84,713 inhabitants).

Design: Weekly count of individual patients with respiratory drug dispensed (Cases) and weekly dispensed daily defined doses (DDD) of drugs were modelled with weekly air mean concentrations of TSP using a Poisson regression model adjusted for long-term trends, seasonal variations, calendar variations due to holidays, and weather.