Cervical cancer screening in immigrant women in Italy: a survey on participation, cytology and histology results.

Cervical cancer screening programmes in Italy actively invite all 25-64-year-old resident women for the Pap test every 3 years irrespective of their citizenship. Immigrant women come from countries where screening is absent or poorly implemented and the prevalence of human papillomavirus is often high. These women therefore have significant risk factors for cervical cancer.

Long-Term Clinical Outcome after Treatment for High-Grade Cervical Lesions: A Retrospective Monoinstitutional Cohort Study.

Background: The aim of this retrospective observational study of women treated for cervical intraepithelial neoplasia grade 2 or worse (CIN2+) was to assess the long-term risk of residual/recurrent high-grade CIN.

Materials And Methods: We evaluated 760 women treated by loop electrosurgical excision procedure (684) or conization (76) between 2000 and 2009, and followed up to June 30, 2014 (median follow-up 6.7 years, range 4-14).

Learning Orthographic Structure With Sequential Generative Neural Networks.

Learning the structure of event sequences is a ubiquitous problem in cognition and particularly in language. One possible solution is to learn a probabilistic generative model of sequences that allows making predictions about upcoming events. Though appealing from a neurobiological standpoint, this approach is typically not pursued in connectionist modeling.

Varieties of quantity estimation in children.

In the number-to-position task, with increasing age and numerical expertise, children's pattern of estimates shifts from a biased (nonlinear) to a formal (linear) mapping. This widely replicated finding concerns symbolic numbers, whereas less is known about other types of quantity estimation. In Experiment 1, Preschool, Grade 1, and Grade 3 children were asked to map continuous quantities, discrete nonsymbolic quantities (numerosities), and symbolic (Arabic) numbers onto a visual line.

HPV prevalence and risk of pre-cancer and cancer in regular immigrants in Italy: results from HPV DNA test-based screening pilot programs.

Unlabelled: ᅟ: Immigrants from low- and medium-income countries have a higher risk of cervical cancer due both to barriers in access to screening and to higher human papillomavirus (HPV) prevalence. In the near future many screening programmes in industrialised countries will replace Pap test with HPV as primary test. In order to plan future interventions, it is essential to understand how the HPV screening performs in immigrant women.

Changes in cervical cancer incidence following the introduction of organized screening in Italy.

Objective: To quantify the impact of organized cervical screening programs (OCSPs) on the incidence of invasive cervical cancer (ICC), comparing rates before and after activation of OCSPs.

Methods: This population-based investigation, using individual data from cancer registries and OCSPs, included 3557 women diagnosed with ICC at age 25-74years in 1995-2008. The year of full-activation of each OCSP was defined as the year when at least 40% of target women had been invited.

Spatial constancy of attention across eye movements is mediated by the presence of visual objects.

Recent studies have shown that attentional facilitation lingers at the retinotopic coordinates of a previously attended position after an eye movement. These results are intriguing, because the retinotopic location becomes behaviorally irrelevant once the eyes have moved. Critically, in these studies participants were asked to maintain attention on a blank location of the screen.

Spontaneous non-verbal counting in toddlers.

A wealth of studies have investigated numerical abilities in infants and in children aged 3 or above, but research on pre-counting toddlers is sparse. Here we devised a novel version of an imitation task that was previously used to assess spontaneous focusing on numerosity (i.e.

Genetic diversity of the KIR/HLA system and susceptibility to hepatitis C virus-related diseases.

Background: The variability in the association of host innate immune response to Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection requires ruling out the possible role of host KIR and HLA genotypes in HCV-related disorders: therefore, we therefore explored the relationships between KIR/HLA genotypes and chronic HCV infection (CHC) as they relate to the risk of HCV-related hepatocarcinoma (HCC) or lymphoproliferative disease progression.

Methods And Findings: We analyzed data from 396 HCV-positive patients with CHC (n = 125), HCC (118), and lymphoproliferative diseases (153), and 501 HCV-negative patients. All were HIV and HBV negative.

[Communicating the benefits and risks of vaccination: a focus on the PFCC (Patient and Family Centered Care) approach].

In recent years an important reduction in the access to vaccination was noticed in Italy. Health care workers involved in health promotion must necessarily find new strategies to overcome the mistrust of the population. The application of some instruments of counselling in the vaccination field can improve the therapeutic alliance, making users to take the best decisions for their own wellness.

Invitation strategies for colorectal cancer screening programmes: The impact of an advance notification letter.

Aim: To estimate the impact of an advance notification letter on participation in sigmoidoscopy (FS) and fecal immunochemical test (FIT) screening.

Methods: Eligible subjects, invited in 3 Italian population based programmes using FS and in 5 using FIT, were randomised (1:1:1), within GP, to: A) standard invitation letter; B) advance notification followed after 1month by the standard invitation; and C) B+indication to contact the general practitioner (GP) to get advice about the decision to be screened. We calculated the 9-month attendance and the incremental cost of each strategy.

Informed cytology for triaging HPV-positive women: substudy nested in the NTCC randomized controlled trial.

Background: Human papillomavirus (HPV)-based screening needs triage. In most randomized controlled trials (RCTs) on HPV testing with cytological triage, cytology interpretation has been blind to HPV status.

Methods: Women age 25 to 60 years enrolled in the New Technology in Cervical Cancer (NTCC) RCT comparing HPV testing with cytology were referred to colposcopy if HPV positive and, if no cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN) was detected, followed up until HPV negativity.

Numerical estimation in individuals with Down syndrome.

We investigated numerical estimation in children with Down syndrome (DS) in order to assess whether their pattern of performance is tied to experience (age), overall cognitive level, or specifically impaired. Siegler and Opfer's (2003) number to position task, which requires translating a number into a spatial position on a number line, was administered to a group of 21 children with DS and to two control groups of typically developing children (TD), matched for mental and chronological age. Results suggest that numerical estimation and the developmental transition between logarithm and linear patterns of estimates in children with DS is more similar to that of children with the same mental age than to children with the same chronological age.

Colorectal cancer screening: tests, strategies, and perspectives.

Screening has a central role in colorectal cancer (CRC) control. Different screening tests are effective in reducing CRC-specific mortality. Influence on cancer incidence depends on test sensitivity for pre-malignant lesions, ranging from almost no influence for guaiac-based fecal occult blood testing (gFOBT) to an estimated reduction of 66-90% for colonoscopy.

The effect of decreased interletter spacing on orthographic processing.

There is growing interest in how perceptual factors such as the spacing between letters within words modulate performance in visual word recognition and reading aloud. Extra-large letter spacing can strongly improve the reading performance of dyslexic children, and a small increase with respect to the standard spacing seems beneficial even for skilled word recognition in adult readers. In the present study we examined the effect of decreased letter spacing on perceptual identification and lexical decision tasks.

"Pure" primary large cell neuroendocrine carcinoma of the urinary bladder: case report, literature review and diagnostic criteria.

Introduction: Large cell neuroendocrine carcinoma (LCNC) is defined in the urinary bladder, as in other sites, as a high-grade neoplasm exhibiting neuroendocrine features at the H&E level, high mitotic activity and evidence of neuroendocrine differentiation by immunohistochemistry. We report a case of pure bladder LCNC with review of the literature.

Methods: A 68-year-old male presented with gross haematuria of two weeks' duration in October 2011.

Quality of colonoscopy in an organised colorectal cancer screening programme with immunochemical faecal occult blood test: the EQuIPE study (Evaluating Quality Indicators of the Performance of Endoscopy).

Objectives: To assess variation in the main colonoscopy quality indicators in organised colorectal cancer (CRC) screening programmes based on faecal immunochemical test (FIT).

Design: Data from a case-series of colonoscopies of FIT-positive subjects were provided by 44 Italian CRC screening programmes. Data on screening history, endoscopic procedure and histology results, and additional information on the endoscopy centre and the endoscopists were collected.

Impact on colorectal cancer mortality of screening programmes based on the faecal immunochemical test.

Objective: Colorectal cancer (CRC) screening programmes based on the guaiac faecal occult blood test (gFOBT) reduce CRC-specific mortality. Several studies have shown higher sensitivity with the faecal immunochemical test (FIT) compared with gFOBT. We carried out an ecological study to evaluate the impact of FIT-based screening programmes on CRC mortality.

A new adaptive videogame for training attention and executive functions: design principles and initial validation.

A growing body of evidence suggests that action videogames could enhance a variety of cognitive skills and more specifically attention skills. The aim of this study was to develop a novel adaptive videogame to support the rehabilitation of the most common consequences of traumatic brain injury (TBI), that is the impairment of attention and executive functions. TBI patients can be affected by psychomotor slowness and by difficulties in dealing with distraction, maintain a cognitive set for a long time, processing different simultaneously presented stimuli, and planning purposeful behavior.

A comparison of different strategies used to invite subjects with a positive faecal occult blood test to a colonoscopy assessment. A randomised controlled trial in population-based screening programmes.

Objective: The purpose of this parallel randomised controlled trial was to compare compliance with different modalities used to invite patients with a positive immunochemical faecal occult blood test (FIT+) for a total colonoscopy (TC).

Method: FIT+ patients from nine Italian colorectal cancer screening programmes were randomised to be invited for a TC initially by mail or by phone and, for non-compliers, to be recalled by mail, for counselling with a general practitioner, or to meet with a specialist screening practitioner (nurse or healthcare assistant).

Results: In all, 3777 patients were randomised to different invitation strategies.

CDP++.Italian: modelling sublexical and supralexical inconsistency in a shallow orthography.

Most models of reading aloud have been constructed to explain data in relatively complex orthographies like English and French. Here, we created an Italian version of the Connectionist Dual Process Model of Reading Aloud (CDP++) to examine the extent to which the model could predict data in a language which has relatively simple orthography-phonology relationships but is relatively complex at a suprasegmental (word stress) level. We show that the model exhibits good quantitative performance and accounts for key phenomena observed in naming studies, including some apparently contradictory findings.

Impact of immunogenetic IL28B polymorphism on natural outcome of HCV infection.

With the aim of investigating whether interleukin 28B gene (IL28B) rs1297860 polymorphism is associated with different hepatitis C (HCV) infection statuses, we compared IL28B allelic distribution in an Italian case series of 1050 patients with chronic infection and different outcomes, 47 individuals who spontaneously cleared HCV, and 178 blood donors. Furthermore, we compared IL28B variants among 3882 Caucasian patients with chronic infection, 397 with spontaneous clearance, and 1366 blood donors reported in PubMed. Overall data confirmed a relation between IL28B C allele and HCV spontaneous clearance.