Identifying ethical values for guiding triage decisions during the COVID-19 pandemic: an Italian ethical committee perspective using Delphi methodology.

Objectives: This study aimed to identify the guiding ethical principles that should be considered for critical resource allocation during pandemic emergency situations, and especially for the COVID-19 outbreak. The secondary objective was to define the priority to be assigned to each principle.

Setting: The study was conducted from March to June 2020 within the context of an ethical committee (EC) in Northern Italy.

Use of antidepressants and the risk of Parkinson's disease in the Local Health Trust of Bologna: A historical cohort study.

Background: Depression is considered one of the prodromal symptoms of Parkinson's disease (PD) along with sleep disorders, hyposmia and constipation. Prodromal symptoms refer to the stage wherein early motor symptoms and signs allowing a diagnosis of PD are not yet present. The objective of this study was to investigate the association between the use of antidepressants, as indirect measure of depression, and subsequent PD onset, clinically diagnosed, in the Local Health Trust of Bologna, Italy.

Impact of treatment on the short-term prognosis of status epilepticus in two population-based cohorts.

Purpose: Epidemiological surveys on status epilepticus (SE) in adults in two Italian areas (Bologna and Lugo di Romagna) disclosed a major difference in 30-day case fatality (33% versus 7 %). Since suboptimal management was hypothesised in the first site, we compared the quality of treatment in the two cohorts and examined its contribution to prognosis.

Methods: The Bologna and Lugo di Romagna cohorts of adults with incident SE were included.

Fatal cerebral haemorrhage after liver transplantation in a patient with transthyretin variant (gly53glu) amyloidosis.

Transthyretin (TTR) amyloidosis is a form of systemic amyloidosis caused by an amyloidogenetic TTR variant. The most common mutant forms of TTR are mainly produced by the liver and therefore orthotopic liver transplantation (OLT) is currently accepted as the only known curative treatment. We describe the clinical and pathological features of a patient with TTR variant (gly53glu) with TTR amyloid infiltration of the leptomeningeal vessels in whom fatal cerebral haemorrhage occurred two months after OLT, soon after severe viral pneumonia.