[A new setting of opportunistic cardiovascular screening: from blood donation to preventive cardiology. Preliminary results of the Cardiorisk program].

Background: Cardiovascular diseases remain the leading cause of mortality and disability in developed countries. Therefore, it is necessary to increase a policy of primary prevention. The most recent European guidelines recommend the use of the absolute risk profile as a tool to identify high-risk individuals, but also underline the need for interventions on the whole population.

Improving transfusion safety by electronic identification of patients, blood samples, and blood units.

To evaluate the feasibility of using an electronic identification system to improve safety and documentation of blood transfusions, a hand-held bar code scanner and data terminal, portable label printer, and related software were integrated into all phases of the blood transfusion process, including sample collection, laboratory testing, and administration of blood components. The study was conducted in two hospitals, one in Italy and the other in the United States. Each hospital used different laboratory analysers and information systems.

Updated definitions of healthy ranges for serum alanine aminotransferase levels.

Background: Serum alanine aminotransferase (ALT) activity, the variable most commonly measured to assess hepatic disease, fails to identify many patients with hepatic injury. Current standards for "normal" ALT level were defined by using populations that included persons with subclinical liver disease.

Objective: To update definitions of healthy ranges for serum ALT level.

Allele frequencies of polymorphisms of TNFA, IL-6, IL-10 and IFNG in an Italian Caucasian population.

Polymorphisms in the regulatory and intronic regions of several cytokines have been associated with differential cytokine production. In this paper we genotyped, using the polymerase chain reaction-sequence-specific primers (PCR-SSP) method, a series of 363 healthy Italian Caucasians with the aim of obtaining a reference population for further studies on the role of cytokines in the inflammatory and immune responses. We also compared the results to those for other populations.