Ten years of anti-smoking programs in Italy: a review.

A diverse anti-smoking program for the prevention of cancer and cardiovascular diseases has been ongoing in Italy since 1981, coordinated by the National Cancer Institute of Genoa and the Italian League Against Cancer of Genoa. The program includes several initiatives addressed to different target groups; schoolchildren and teachers, military personnel, doctors and nurses, and women. A preliminary inquiry on the attitudes and habits towards smoking was implemented by the distribution of questionnaires to the various groups involved in the program.

Campaigns against smoking: compliance and results.

Smoking has become a true epidemic that interests a lot of people in the world. The antismoking programmes are at these moments the most important strategy to prevent lung cancer and cardiovascular diseases. This article analyses the compliance and the results of the antismoking campaigns in the world.

Molecular and cytogenetic characterization of radiation hybrids specific for human chromosome 16.

Two hundred and twenty-three radiation hybrids retaining random fragments of human chromosome 16 were isolated during two successive experiments in HAT medium and screened with a total of 38 DNA probes, corresponding to anonymous DNA or gene sequences localized on chromosome 16. The presence of single or multiple human chromosomal fragments in a small subset of these hybrids was determined using in situ hybridization with total human DNA. The results confirm that individual radiation hybrids are often heterogeneous with respect to the retention and distribution of human fragments, as already suggested by their characterization with DNA probes.

Proliferative activity of primary breast cancer and of synchronous lymph node metastases evaluated by [3H]-thymidine labelling index.

The [3H]-thymidine labelling index ([3H]TdR LI) has been used to evaluate and comparatively analyse the proliferative activity of different tumour lesions from the same patient. The analysis was performed on the primary tumour and its synchronous lymph node metastasis from 210 patients operated on for breast cancer. A direct relation was observed between the proliferative activity of the two different lesions (Spearman correlation coefficient = 0.