Working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic. The role of physical activity to counteract the workers' oxidative stress. A pilot study.

Objective: Office workers spend typically more than two-thirds of their working time sitting and this negative behaviour could have been increased during the pandemic. Low levels of Physical Activity (PA) can have detrimental effects on health, well-being, and Quality of Life (QoL), as well as on the oxidative stress burden. Our aim was to evaluate the role of moderate PA remotely administered in modulating the bio-molecular profile and the QoL of a group of workers during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Combination of PDT and NOPDT with a Tailored BODIPY Derivative.

The engineering of photosensitizers (PS) for photodynamic therapy (PDT) with nitric oxide (NO) photodonors (NOPD) is broadening the horizons for new and yet to be fully explored unconventional anticancer treatment modalities that are entirely controlled by light stimuli. In this work, we report a tailored boron-dipyrromethene (BODIPY) derivative that acts as a PS and a NOPD simultaneously upon single photon excitation with highly biocompatible green light. The photogeneration of the two key species for PDT and NOPDT, singlet oxygen (O) and NO, has been demonstrated by their direct detection, while the formation of NO is shown not to be dependent on the presence of oxygen.

Incidence and pathological characteristics of prostate cancer in Italy: a contribution to the screening debate.

Background: The scientific, social and financial aspects of prostate cancer (PC) organized or opportunistic screening to identify early PC are hotly debated. The incidence of prostate cancer is lower in Italy than in America and North Europe and data on PC incidence and pathological characteristics are scarce.

Methods: To determine PC incidence and whether screening would be beneficial, we studied 1008 consecutive symptomatic patients from the Southern Italy who underwent transrectal ultrasonography; 170 of them (age range: 48-93 years; median: 70 years) were at risk and underwent transrectal biopsy.

Usefulness of power Doppler in the diagnostic management of hypoechoic thyroid nodules.

Objective: The usefulness of power Doppler (PD), a new color Doppler ultrasonography technique, namely in the diagnosis and management of hypoechoic thyroid nodules in comparison with color Doppler (CD) is investigated in this study. Patients and methods: 157 hypoechoic thyroid nodules were studied by CD and PD. The distribution of vascular patterns was compared with the results obtained at cytology and/or histology.

[Usefulness of color echo Doppler with power Doppler in the diagnosis of hypoechoic thyroid nodules: work in progress].

The aim of this study was twofold: first, to improve the predictive value of ultrasonography (US) in differentiating benign from malignant thyroid nodules and, second, to investigate whether color Doppler and power Doppler can distinguish different morpho-hemodynamic patterns of hypoechoic thyroid nodules according to their vascularity. Twenty-nine patients with hypoechoic thyroid nodule(s) were entered into this work in progress. Three typical power Doppler patterns were recorded and compared with color Doppler patterns and with cytologic and/or histologic findings.