Tissue Engineering Construct for Articular Cartilage Restoration with Stromal Cells from Synovium vs. Dental Pulp-A Pre-Clinical Study.

Background/objectives: Cartilage injuries and osteoarthritis are prevalent public health problems, due to their disabling nature and economic impact. Mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) isolated from different tissues have the immunomodulatory capacity to regulate local joint environment. This translational study aims to compare cartilage restoration from MSCs from the synovial membrane (SM) and dental pulp (DP) by a tissue-engineered construct with Good Manufacturing Practices.

Dietary habits, lifestyles, and overall adherence to 2018 WCRF/AICR cancer prevention recommendations among adult women in the EPIC-Florence cohort: Changes from adulthood to older age and differences across birth cohorts.

Objectives, Setting And Participants: We aimed to examine changes in dietary habits, lifestyles (e.g., smoking, physical activity levels, and alcohol intake), anthropometry, other individual health-relevant characteristics, and overall adherence to 2018 WCRF/AICR cancer prevention recommendations, among women enrolled in the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC)-Florence cohort.

Cigarette smoking and mammographic breast density in post-menopausal women from the EPIC Florence cohort.

Introduction: Cigarette smoking has been recognized as a risk factor for breast cancer (BC) also if the biological mechanism remains poorly understood. High mammographic breast density (MBD) is associated with BC risk and many BC risk factors, such as genetic, anthropometric, reproductive and lifestyle factors and age, are also able to modulate MBD. The aim of the present study was to prospectively explore, in post-menopausal women, the association between smoking habits and MBD, assessed using an automated software, considering duration and intensity of smoking.

How to direct patients to high-volume hospitals: exploring the influencing drivers.

Background: During the last decade, planning concentration policies have been applied in healthcare systems. Among them, attention has been given to guiding patients towards high-volume hospitals that perform better, acccording to the volume-outcome association. This paper analyses which factors drive patients to choose big or small hospitals (with respect to the international standards of volumes of activity).

Use and misuse of the emergency room by patients with eating disorders in a matched-cohort analysis: What can we learn from it?

We examined the pattern of access to hospital emergency room (hER) in 2018-2021 among patients with eating disorders (ED) from Florence, Italy, diagnosed during 1994-2018, using a matched cohort design. We included 902 ED patients and an equal number of sex-, age-, and residence-matched individuals. We fitted conditional Poisson regression models with robust variance estimator to estimate incidence rate ratios (IRR) and 95% confidence intervals.