[Mortality excess analysis for year 2015 in Palermo Province (Sicily Region, Southern Italy)].

Background: a death number increment compared to the previous years was observed in Italy for the year 2015; its causes are under study.

Objectives: to verify if the mortality occurred in Palermo Province (Sicily Region, Southern Italy) for the year 2015 was greater than the one observed in the previous period (years 2009-2014) and to find which death causes it would be attributable to.

Design: observed number of deaths in 2015 were compared with expected numbers calculated with the traditional analysis of direct adjusted rates, and with a 90% predictive interval estimated fitting a Generalized Additive Model (GAM), via a quasi-Poisson distribution of the observed deaths in the period 2009-2014; various measures of the environmental temperature were used as regressor.

[Mortality in relation to individual- and area-level socioeconomic status in Palermo (Italy): a multilevel analysis].

Objective: to assess whether compositional (education, income index, number of family members) and contextual (area socioeconomic index) risk factors independently predict all cause and specific mortality.

Design: a multilevel (hierarchic) logistic regression model was applied to the individual data of a cohort followed up from 01.01.

[Mortality in areas with different socioeconomic characteristics in Palermo].

Objective: To assess whether mortality rates differ among areas with different values of a socioeconomic index.

Design: Ecological mortality study; mortality rates were compared among four areas joining census tracts categorized by quartiles of a socioeconomic status index. This index was calculated using individual 2001 census data in a factorial analysis.

Mortality and causes of death in celiac disease in a Mediterranean area.

No data on mortality in celiac disease are currently available in southern Europe. Our aim was to evaluate mortality and the cause of death in adult celiac disease in a Mediterranean area. In all, 228 adults with celiac disease were histologically diagnosed in our department from 1980 to 1997.