Staying home saves lives, really!

When coronavirus disease (COVID-19) was spreading worldwide, many national and local governments started to impose socially restrictive measures to limit the spread of the virus. Such quarantine measures in different cities worldwide have brought a new trend in public safety improvement and crime reduction. Using daily crime reports in the U.

Complement-associated loss of CA2 inhibitory synapses in the demyelinated hippocampus impairs memory.

The complement system is implicated in synapse loss in the MS hippocampus, but the functional consequences of synapse loss remain poorly understood. Here, in post-mortem MS hippocampi with demyelination we find that deposits of the complement component C1q are enriched in the CA2 subfield, are linked to loss of inhibitory synapses and are significantly higher in MS patients with cognitive impairments compared to those with preserved cognitive functions. Using the cuprizone mouse model of demyelination, we corroborated that C1q deposits are highest within the demyelinated dorsal hippocampal CA2 pyramidal layer and co-localized with inhibitory synapses engulfed by microglia/macrophages.

Lockdown measures and air quality: evidence from Italian provinces.

The aim of this short communication is to estimate the effects of the implementation of more restrictive lockdown measures on pollution levels in Italy. Using a time series of weekly concentrations of PM, PM and NO for the period 2016-2020 across 71 provinces, we find that the introduction of lockdown measures reduced the air concentration levels of PM and NO by 17-18%, while their effect on PM remains unclear. These results indicate that the lockdown had a significant positive impact in terms of lives saved and improved air quality.