Collective Catering Activities and Official Controls: Dietary Promotion, Sustainability and Future Perspectives.

Ensuring safe meals with suitable hygienic-sanitary and nutritional features is an essential requirement to guarantee health in different settings. This study aims to evaluate the compliance of collective catering menus adopted in both school canteens and healthcare facilities in a regional area where specific guidelines have been issued, assessing many matters from food weight to single courses and from the use of wholegrain pasta and bread to the rotation of seasonal fruit and vegetables. Overall, 85 menus, edited by freelance professionals and endorsed by the Food Hygiene and Nutrition Service staff of the Local Health Authority, were assessed from 2018 to 2022, highlighting critical issues potentially attributable at a local level to the lack of complete knowledge of the existence of guidelines and official reference documents among nutrition professionals.

The Preventive Health Professions in Italy: The Efficient Use of Resources, Skills and Best Practice during the Pandemic.

Health visitors (HVs) and environmental health officers (EHOs) are the healthcare workers (HCWs) who, in the Italian National Health Service, mainly operate in the prevention departments of local health authorities, guaranteeing the territorial activities specifically declared with the respective professional profiles. During the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, it was necessary to reallocate all HCWs supporting Hygiene and Public Health Services involved on the front lines of the emergency, in order to perform preventive activities and to take immediate action to fight the spread of the virus. By means of an IT survey consisting of three sections, this study investigated how 960 HVs and EHOs dealt with this reallocation, with the shifting in service assignment, and with the perceived level of fatigue and pressure, through the application of skills acquired from university training.

An Integrated Control Plan in Primary Schools: Results of a Field Investigation on Nutritional and Hygienic Features in the Apulia Region (Southern Italy).

Data concerning overweight and obesity in children and adolescent populations are alarming and represent one of the most serious public health problems of our time. Moreover, it is demonstrated that the school environment may play an important role in health promotion with regard to nutritional aspects. This article reports the results of a study conducted in the Apulia region (Southern Italy), aimed at providing an integrated surveillance of the behaviors related to nutrition habits in students and the hygienic and nutritional conditions of the school's canteens attended by enrolled students.

Cytosolic calcium and hemorheological patterns during arterial hypertension.

Hypertension can be considered as a progressive ischaemic syndrome interesting micro- and macrovasculature. In hypertensives it is possible to observe a link between an increase in peripheral resistance and blood viscosity, and a decrease in red blood cell (RBC) deformability. It is important to underline the link between the increase of blood viscosity, the decrease of RBC deformability and the cytosolic calcium level, which is related to the ischaemic syndrome in hypertension.

Tissular oxygenation and erythrocyte deformability in haemodialyzed patients using different dialytic membranes.

We studied the effect of some dialytic membrane on tissular oxygenation (TO) and erythrocyte deformability (ED). Sixteen patients (10 M and 6 F, aged 59 +/- 12 years) have been submitted to bicarbonate dialysis (BD) and subdivided into four groups (GR) of 4 patients each: GR 1 (hemophan membrane, 35 BD), GR 2 (polyacrylonitrile, PAN AN 69, 42 BD), GR 3 (polysulphone, 38 BD) and GR 4 (polycarbonate, 37 BD). The TO has been detected with the transcutaneous oxygen pressure (Tc pO2) using a transcutaneous oxymeter and the ED has been evaluated with the EMI (Erythrocyte Morphometric Index), which results from the ratio between deformable erythrocytes (bowl shape) and rigid erythrocytes (discocyte shape), for every 100 red cells fixed in vitro with 0.

Hemorheological aspects in hypertensive menopausal smoker women treated with female hormones.

In postmenopausal hypertensive women (PostMHW) the erythrocyte deformability (ED) is reduced if compared with premenopausal hypertensive women (PreMHW). This might partially explain the increased incidence of cardiovascular diseases (CD) in hypertensive women after menopause. Moreover a positive correlation exists between estradiol and rheological patterns in women.

Hemorheology in complicated hypertension.

During essential and secondary arterial hypertension it is possible to observe changes in microcirculation perfusion associated with a reduction in tissue oxygenation due in part to hemorheological changes such as an increase in blood viscosity or the formation of the red blood cell "rouleaux" which favour an increase in peripheral resistance and can cause or worsen arterial hypertension. We studied 21 healthy subjects (11 male and 10 female aged 42 +/- 4) and 26 hypertensive subjects (14 male and 12 female aged 49 +/- 3). The patients were non smokers and non suffering from respiratory or haemathological pathologies.

Hemorheology and tissue oxygenation in hypertensives with lipoidoproteinosis and peripheral occlusive arterial disease (POAD) treated with sulodexide and pravastatine and evaluated with laser assisted optical rotational red cell analyzer (LORCA) and transcutaneous oxymetry.

Background: During arterial hypertension it is often possible to find other factors like lipoidoproteinosis and peripheral arterial disease (POAD), which can accentuate blood rheological abnormalities in hypertensive subjects. A group of hypertensives with lipoidoproteinosis (LP) and POAD were therefore examined to evaluate the relationship between these factors and blood rheological disorders and, if possible, to correct it.

Methods: We studied a group of 27 hypertensives with LP and POAD (15 males and 12 females in menopause for at least 1 year, aged 48 +/- 4 years), with WHO stage I hypertension, obesity (BMI = 30 +/- 2), stage II type "a" POAD, class 2 type "b" lipoidoproteinosis (acc.

Mouse model for protoporphyria. III. Experimental production of chronic erythropoietic protoporphyria-like skin lesions.

Albino mice were made protoporphyric with griseofulvin according to an established procedure. Photosensitivity flares were elicited once a week throughout a 10-month period, using black light as a source for 410 nm radiation and the flares were monitored by the intravenous injection of vascular tracers and by light and electron microscopy. Each irradiation led to a selective destruction of the endothelial cells of superficial capillaries which was followed by massive vascular leakage.