Factors correlated with hearing aids adherence in older adults: a prospective controlled study.

Objective: To investigate which factors influence the adherence to hearing aid (HA) use in elderly patients with moderate-to-severe hearing loss.

Methods: This observational, prospective, single-centre study enrolled patients with moderate-to-severe hearing loss. They were evaluated before and 1 year after having either one or two HAs fitted.

Do Different Types of Microphones Affect Listening Effort in Cochlear Implant Recipients? A Pupillometry Study.

Background: It is known that subjects with a cochlear implant (CI) need to exert more listening effort to achieve adequate speech recognition compared to normal hearing subjects. One tool for assessing listening effort is pupillometry. The aim of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of adaptive directional microphones in reducing listening effort for CI recipients.

Nutritional Treatment in a Cohort of Pediatric Patients with Familial Hypercholesterolaemia: Effect on Lipid Profile.

Background and aims: Familial Hypercholesterolaemia (FH) is characterised by a genetic alteration in the transport and metabolism of cholesterol that leads to elevated levels of total cholesterol (CT) and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) and early onset of atherosclerosis. According to the current guidelines, diet and promotion of healthy habits are first-line treatments. Little is known about the effectiveness of cholesterol-lowering diet and healthy lifestyle habits on plasma cholesterol and lipid profile in children and adolescents with FH.

From the Triage to the Intermediate Area: A Simple and Fast Model for COVID-19 in the Emergency Department.

Introduction: The early identification of patients with SARS-CoV-2 infection is still a real challenge for emergency departments (ED). First, we aimed to develop a score, based on the use of the lung ultrasonography (LUS), in addition to the pre-triage interview, to correctly address patients; second, we aimed to prove the usefulness of a three-path organization (COVID-19, not-COVID-19 and intermediate) compared to a two-path organization (COVID-19, non-COVID-19).

Methods: We retrospectively analysed 292 patients admitted to our ED from 10 April to 15 April 2020, with a definite diagnosis of positivity (93 COVID-19 patients) or negativity (179 not-COVID-19 patients) for SARS-COV-2 infection.

An Adaptation and Validation Study of the Speech, Spatial, and Qualities of Hearing Scale (SSQ) in Italian Normal-Hearing Children.

This study aimed to translate and adapt the English version of the Speech, Spatial, and Qualities of Hearing Scale (SSQ) for children and for parents into the Italian language; validate SSQ for hearing children and their parents; and evaluate the discriminant validity of the instrument. A group of 102 normal-hearing Italian children, aged between 9 and 16 years, and their parents were included in this study. A group of 31 parents of normal-hearing Italian children aged between 6 and 8 years was also included.

Lipoprotein(a) and family history for cardiovascular disease in paediatric patients: A new frontier in cardiovascular risk stratification. Data from the LIPIGEN paediatric group.

Background And Aims: Little is known about the role of Lp(a) in the assessment of cardiovascular risk in the paediatric population. Trying to clarify the clinical relevance of Lp(a) in risk stratification, the aim of the study is to evaluate the association between Lp(a) plasma levels in children with familial hypercholesterolaemia (FH) and positive family history for premature cardiovascular disease (pCVD) in first- and second-degree relatives.

Methods: 653 Caucasian children and adolescents (334 females and 319 males), aged 2-17 years, with diagnosis of FH from a paediatric cohort included in the LIPIGEN Network, were selected.

Mixed T cell CHIMERISM in bone marrow at day+30 after allogeneic stem cell transplantation: Correlation with acute GVHD grades III-IV and no impact on relapse and overall survival.

Objectives: Early chimerism analysis is important to assess engraftment in allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantations.

Methods: We retrospectively investigated the impact of T-cell chimerism at day 30 in bone marrow on acute graft-versus-host disease (aGVHD), relapse, and overall survival in 142 adult allo-transplanted patients.

Results: The majority of patients (89%) received myeloablative conditioning and 90% have undergone T-cell replete donor graft.

Bayesian Analysis of ANOVA and Mixed Models on the Log-Transformed Response Variable.

The analysis of variance, and mixed models in general, are popular tools for analyzing experimental data in psychology. Bayesian inference for these models is gaining popularity as it allows to easily handle complex experimental designs and data dependence structures. When working on the log of the response variable, the use of standard priors for the variance parameters can create inferential problems and namely the non-existence of posterior moments of parameters and predictive distributions in the original scale of the data.

Evaluation of factors affecting total nucleated cells in umbilical cord blood collected for the Calabria Cord Blood Bank.

Background: Total nucleated cell (TNC) count is the most important biological feature to consider in assessing the quality of umbilical cord blood (UCB) for hematopoietic stem cell (HSC) transplantation. Certain obstetric factors have been reported to increase TNC count in UCB units collected for transplantation. The aim of our study was to analyze how various maternal, neonatal and obstetric factors affected TNC count in the UCBs we collected for our cord blood bank in southern Italy.

The Effects of Air Pollution on COVID-19 Related Mortality in Northern Italy.

Long-term exposure to ambient air pollutant concentrations is known to cause chronic lung inflammation, a condition that may promote increased severity of COVID-19 syndrome caused by the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2). In this paper, we empirically investigate the ecologic association between long-term concentrations of area-level fine particulate matter (PM) and excess deaths in the first quarter of 2020 in municipalities of Northern Italy. The study accounts for potentially spatial confounding factors related to urbanization that may have influenced the spreading of SARS-CoV-2 and related COVID-19 mortality.

Bayesian inference for quantiles of the log-normal distribution.

The log-normal distribution is very popular for modeling positive right-skewed data and represents a common distributional assumption in many environmental applications. Here we consider the estimation of quantiles of this distribution from a Bayesian perspective. We show that the prior on the variance of the log of the variable is relevant for the properties of the posterior distribution of quantiles.

Does early cochlear implantation promote better reading comprehension skills?

Objective: to investigate the effect of age at CI activation and to explore the role of other variables such as linguistic skills, stimulation modality and gender on reading comprehension.

Study Design: Prospective observational nonrandomized study.

Methods: 89 children with profound congenital sensorineural hearing loss were included in the study.

Combining Landscape Genomics and Ecological Modelling to Investigate Local Adaptation of Indigenous Ugandan Cattle to East Coast Fever.

East Coast fever (ECF) is a fatal sickness affecting cattle populations of eastern, central, and southern Africa. The disease is transmitted by the tick , and caused by the protozoan , which invades host lymphocytes and promotes their clonal expansion. Importantly, indigenous cattle show tolerance to infection in ECF-endemically stable areas.

Social conversational skills development in early implanted children.

Objectives/hypothesis: Social conversational skills are a salient aspect of early pragmatic development in young children. These skills include two different abilities, assertiveness and responsiveness. This study investigated the development of these abilities in early implanted children and their relationships with lexical development and some language-sensitive variables.

Narrative abilities in early implanted children.

Objectives/hypothesis: To investigate the effect of age at cochlear implant activation on oral narrative ability in children implanted before 2.5 years of age and to examine the role of other variables (gender, parental education level, stimulation modality) in narrative skills.

Study Design: retrospective nonrandomized group study

Methods: Thirty children (21 females; 9 males) with congenital, bilateral severe-to-profound sensorineural hearing loss were included in this study.

Pre-school children have better spoken language when early implanted.

Objectives: The objectives of this study were: (1) to investigate the effect of age at cochlear implantation (CI) on vocabulary development; (2) to evaluate the age effect at CI surgery on the syntactic development; and (3) to examine the role of gender, age at first diagnosis and maternal education level on spoken language development.

Material And Methods: Retrospective study. Thirty children with congenital severe- to -profound sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) were sampled.

Production of infant scale evaluation (PRISE) in Italian normal hearing children: a validation study.

Objectives: Parental questionnaires are important tools in the evaluation of auditory and language skills of very young children affected by sensorineural hearing loss. One of these instruments is the Production on Infant Scale Evaluation (PRISE). The purposes of this study were to adapt and validate the PRISE on Italian children with normal hearing; and to obtain normative data.

Outlier robust model-assisted small area estimation.

Small area estimation with M-quantile models was proposed by Chambers and Tzavidis (). The key target of this approach to small area estimation is to obtain reliable and outlier robust estimates avoiding at the same time the need for strong parametric assumptions. This approach, however, does not allow for the use of unit level survey weights, making questionable the design consistency of the estimators unless the sampling design is self-weighting within small areas.

Biodiversity among Lactobacillus helveticus strains isolated from different natural whey starter cultures as revealed by classification trees.

Lactobacillus helveticus is a homofermentative thermophilic lactic acid bacterium used extensively for manufacturing Swiss type and aged Italian cheese. In this study, the phenotypic and genotypic diversity of strains isolated from different natural dairy starter cultures used for Grana Padano, Parmigiano Reggiano, and Provolone cheeses was investigated by a classification tree technique. A data set was used that consists of 119 L.