Publications by authors named "Lucia Di Furia"

Background: Health literacy has a strong influence on individual health outcomes and the sustainability of healthcare systems. Healthcare professionals often overestimate patients' health literacy levels and lack adequate competencies to address limited health literacy effectively. Therefore, promoting understanding through effective health communication between professionals and citizens is becoming increasingly important.

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Women who inject drugs (WWID) are an especially vulnerable group of drug users. This study determined the prevalence of psychiatric comorbidity and intimate partrner violence (IPV), and factors associated with psychiatric comorbidity among WWID recruited from drug treatment services (67%) and harm reduction services in five European regions in Austria, Catalonia, Italy, Poland, and Scotland. Psychiatric comorbidity was assessed among 226 WWID using the Dual Diagnosis Screening Instrument.

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Background: Critical health literacy enables older adults to make informed health decisions and take actions for the health and wellbeing of themselves and their community, within their own social and cultural context. A community-based approach has the potential to improve the critical health literacy of older adults and their communities. However, it is not clear how such initiatives consider critical health literacy.

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Objectives: To assess detection rate and predictive factors of sessile serrated polyps (SSPs) in organised colorectal cancer (CRC) screening programmes based on the faecal immunochemical test (FIT).

Design: Data from a case series of colonoscopies of FIT-positive subjects were provided by 44 Italian CRC screening programmes. Data on screening history, endoscopic procedure and histology results, and additional information on the endoscopy centre and the endoscopists were collected, including the age-standardised and sex-standardised adenoma detection rate (ADR) of the individual endoscopists.

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Objectives: To assess variation in the main colonoscopy quality indicators in organised colorectal cancer (CRC) screening programmes based on faecal immunochemical test (FIT).

Design: Data from a case-series of colonoscopies of FIT-positive subjects were provided by 44 Italian CRC screening programmes. Data on screening history, endoscopic procedure and histology results, and additional information on the endoscopy centre and the endoscopists were collected.

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Objectives: The recent emergence of new psychoactive compounds (novel psychoactive substances (NPS)) has raised prominent challenges in the fields of drug policy, substance use research, public health and service provision. The Recreational Drugs European Network project, funded by the European Commission, was implemented to improve the information stream to young people and professionals about effects/risks of NPS by identifying online products and disseminating relevant information through technological tools.

Methods: Regular multilingual qualitative assessments of websites, drugs fora and other online resources were carried out using the Google search engine in eight languages from collaborating countries.

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Background: This paper presents the outcomes of the 2-year European Union funded Psychonaut Web Mapping Project which aimed at developing and implementing an integrated web mapping system to promptly identify and learn about novel psychoactive substances (NPS; "legal highs") through the regular monitoring of the Internet.

Methods: More than 200 discussion forums, social media, online shops, websites and other Internet resources (e.g.

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On the basis of the material available both in the scientific literature and on the web, this paper aims to provide a pharmacological, chemical and behavioural overview of the novel compound methoxetamine. This is a dissociative drug related to ketamine, with a much longer duration of action and intensity of effects. A critical discussion of the availability of information on the web of methoxetamine as a new recreational trend is here provided.

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Based on the material available in both the scientific literature and on the web, the present paper provides an updated pharmacological, chemical, toxicological and behavioural overview of Bromo-Dragonfly (1-(8-bromobenzo[1,2-b;4,5-b']difuran-4-yl)-2-aminopropane; 'B-fly'). B-Fly is a powerful, long lasting, LSD-like, hallucinogenic drug, which has been associated with a number of acute intoxications and fatalities in a number of countries. A critical discussion of the potential of misuse of B-fly but also of the methodological limitations, which are intrinsically associated with the analysis of online, non-peer reviewed, material, is presented.

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According to the so-called telescoping effect, there is a gender-specific course of alcohol dependence with women starting alcohol use later than men and having a faster development of harmful consequences. There are inconsistent data regarding a telescoping effect in opiate dependence. In each of six European centres, 100 opiate addicts were investigated by a structured interview (mainly the EuropASI and CIDI) at admission to various kinds of treatment (TREAT project).

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Purpose: Only a few formal assessments of websites with drug-related contents have been carried out. We aimed here at fostering collection and analysis of data from web pages related to information on consumption, manufacture and sales of psychoactive substances.

General Methods: An 8-language, two-engine, assessment of the information available in a purposeful sample of 1633 unique websites was carried out.

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2C-T-7 ('Blue Mystic'), an illicit compound which shows similarities with MDMA and other designer drugs, has been only occasionally identified in the EU, but discussion on the Internet between experimenters has recently grown significantly. We aimed at collecting together in a review the available information on 2C-T-7, both at the cyber and at the street market level. 2C-T-7 was first synthesized in 1986; its desired effects include both a sense of empathy and of well-being.

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