Making a Virtue of Necessity: The Use of Wild Edible Plant Species (Also Toxic) in Bread Making in Times of Famine According to Giovanni Targioni Tozzetti (1766).

In 1766, the agricultural scientist Giovanni Targioni Tozzetti described for the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, the wild and cultivated plant species that could be used, in times of famine, to increase the quantity of flour or vegetable mass in bread making. These wild plants can be defined as wild edible plants (WEPs) or "alimurgic species", a concept usually traced back to Giovanni Targioni Tozzetti himself. The 342 plant names mentioned in the text are in the Tuscan vernacular, so a research work was done on bibliographic sources from the 1800s in order to match them with their current nomenclature.

Design a Database of Italian Vascular Alimurgic Flora (AlimurgITA): Preliminary Results.

Despite the large number of data published in Italy on WEPs, there is no database providing a complete knowledge framework. Hence the need to design a database of the Italian alimurgic flora: AlimurgITA. Only strictly alimurgic taxa were chosen, excluding casual alien and cultivated ones.

Impaired flow-mediated dilation in hospitalized patients with community-acquired pneumonia.

Background: Community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) is complicated by cardiovascular events as myocardial infarction and stroke but the underlying mechanism is still unclear. We hypothesized that endothelial dysfunction may be implicated and that endotoxemia may have a role.

Methods: Fifty patients with CAP and 50 controls were enrolled.

Ethnobotanical study on the medicinal plants in the Mainarde Mountains (central-southern Apennine, Italy).

Ethnopharmacological Relevance: New documentation of the uses of plants in the popular medicine of the Mainarde Mountain, a protected area of the central-southern Apennine characterised by a high floristic richness, is here reported.

Materials And Methods: Field data were collected through semi-structured and open interviews with native People between 2011 and 2014. The plants were identified and vouchers specimens were scanned to create a Virtual Herbarium.

Apoptotic Epitope-Specific CD8+ T Cells and Interferon Signaling Intersect in Chronic Hepatitis C Virus Infection.

CD8(+) T cells specific to caspase-cleaved antigens derived from apoptotic T cells represent a principal player in chronic immune activation. Here, we found that both apoptotic epitope-specific and hepatitis C virus (HCV)-specific CD8(+) T cells were mostly confined within the effector memory (EM) or terminally differentiated EM CD45RA(+) cell subsets expressing a dysfunctional T-helper 1-like signature program in chronic HCV infection. However, apoptotic epitope-specific CD8(+) T cells produced tumor necrosis factor α and interleukin 2 at the intrahepatic level significantly more than HCV-specific CD8(+) T cells, despite both populations expressing high levels of programmed death 1 receptor.