Dal 1969, si documentavano alcune criticità sanitarie in Puglia, soprattutto nelle province di Taranto, Brindisi e Lecce. La ricostruzione storica degli andamenti di mortalità dal 1929 al 2010 per le patologie respiratorie evidenziano, nelle province di Taranto, Brindisi e Lecce, un quadro sanitario particolarmente compromesso e concomitante con l’inizio del processo di industrializzazione.

Clonazione e cellule staminali sono due grandi temi di dibattito sollevati oggi dalla scienza. Non c’è dubbio che la medicina e la società si trovino di fronte ad una svolta importante che richiede decisioni gravi per le loro implicazioni; decisioni che non dovrebbero essere viziate da conoscenze carenti o errate. Questo libro, ampiamente aggiornato ai più recenti progressi compiuti dalla ricerca biotecnologica in questo campo, si colloca nella prospettiva più adatta a fornire un contributo personale concreto sui dibattiti in corso e rappresenta uno strumento pratico e completo per studenti universitari e ricercatori. Sono trattati sia gli aspetti etico – scientifici che i risvolti applicativi delle cellule staminali e della clonazione. Ripercorrere la storia di queste tecniche aiuterà a capire se i rischi che corriamo oggi siano realmente diversi e più preoccupanti di quelli che abbiamo corso in passato.

Antioxidant phytochemicals, including the polyphenols from olive oil oleuropein (OE) and hydroxytyrosol (HT), and red wine antioxidant resveratrol (RSV) and quercetin (Q), are associated with low prevalence of cardiovascular diseases and cancer. Angiogenesis is a key process both in cancer and atherosclerosis, and is tightly regulated by molecular mediators including reactive oxygen species (ROS), cyclooxygenase (COX)-2 and matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs). We studied the effects of olive oil and red wine antioxidants on the angiogenic potential in an in vitro model of angiogenesis, and explored underlying mechanisms.

Iodinated radiocontrast media have been the most widely used pharmaceuticals for intravascular administration in diagnostic and interventional angiographic procedures. Although they are regarded as relatively safe drugs and vascular biocompatibility of contrast media has been progressively improved, severe adverse reactions may occur, among which acute nephropathy is one of the most clinically significant complications after intravascular administration of contrast media and a powerful predictor of poor early and long-term outcomes. Since radiocontrast media are given through the arterial or the venous circulation in vascular procedures, morphological and functional changes of the microvascular and macrovascular endothelial cells substantially contribute to the pathogenesis of organ-specific and systemic adverse reactions of contrast media. Endothelial toxicity of contrast media seems to be the result of both direct proapoptotic effects and morphological derangements, as well as endothelial dysfunction and induction of inflammation, oxidative stress, thrombosis, and altered vasomotor balance, with predominant vasoconstrictive response in atherosclerotic coronary arteries and kidney microcirculation. Further understanding of pathogenetic mechanisms underlying contrast media-induced adverse reactions in cellular targets, including endothelial cells, will hopefully lead to the development of novel preventive strategies appropriately curbing the pathogenesis of contrast media vasotoxicity.

Contrary to what is commonly believed, music therapy is an old cure, the use of which is lost in the mists of time. Music always has been perceived to have particular healing powers, and the entire history of civilization contains aspects that link music to physical and mental healing. It seems that the adoption of music for therapeutic purposes harks back to a distant past, probably since the Paleolithic period: it was believed that listening to music could affect the behavior of human beings. In later centuries, the concept of “musical organ-tropism” was born and developed, because according to the type of music, one may affect the cardiovascular, respiratory, and neuroendocrine systems. Studies have shown that music can powerfully evoke and modulate emotions and moods, along with changes in heart activity, blood pressure, and breathing. Indeed, the following findings arise from the literature: heart and respiratory rates are higher in response to exciting music than in the case of tranquilizing music. In addition, music produces activity changes in brain structures (amygdala, hypothalamus, insular and orbitofrontal cortex) known to modulate heart function. This article provides a careful overview of music therapy history from prehistory to the present and a reviewof the latest applications of music therapy in cardiovascular diseases.

A filamentous cyanobacterium (strain ITAC101) isolated from a Mediterranean sponge (Petrosia ficiformis) was characterized by a combined phenotypic and genetic approach. Morphological and ultrastructural observations were performed along with growth measurements and pigment characterization. The molecular phylogenetic analyses were based on the sequencing of the 16S rRNA gene. In culture conditions, strain ITAC101 is moderately halophilic and grew in the range 0.3-7.6% (w/v) salinity with the optimum at 3.6%. Cell dimensions, thylakoid arrangement and pigment composition of this cyanobacterium fit the Halomicronema genus description, and phylogenetic analyses evidenced 99.9% similarity with another strain endolithic in tropical corals. The new Halomicronema metazoicum species was established including the two cyanobacteria associated to marine animals

L'analisi di 40 anni di mortalità mostra una lieve decrescita degli omicidi di donne a livello nazionale. Ciò depone per cause profondamente radicate nelle dinamiche relazionali tra uomini e donne, su tutto il territorio nazionale. La decrescita interessa principalmente Sud e Isole e gli SMR% sottolineano un'inversione del rapporto tra aree geografiche. Non si può escludere che almeno una parte della diminuzione degli omicidi di donne sia da attribuire alla generale diminuzione degli omicidi connessi alle attività criminali, più spiccata nel Sud e nelle Isole. La particolare dinamica degli omicidi di donne tra i 15 e i 49 anni, con un’inversione dei rapporti tra le aree geografiche del paese, sembra indicare la particolare criticità delle relazioni uomo – donna nel periodo in cui è maggiore il ruolo dei fattori sessuali.

Dal 1969, indagini epidemiologiche ed ambientali avevano documentato alcune criticità sanitarie in Puglia, soprattutto nelle province di Taranto, Brindisi e Lecce. Eccessi di mortalità si osservavano, a livello comunale e provinciale, per tumori e malattie dell’apparato respiratorio. La ricostruzione storica degli andamenti di mortalità dal 1933 al 2010 per le patologie respiratorie evidenziano, nelle province di Taranto, Brindisi e Lecce, un quadro sanitario particolarmente compromesso e concomitante con l’inizio del processo di industrializzazione. La mortalità per tali patologie risulta, al contrario, mediamente al di sotto dei valori nazionali nelle province di Bari e Foggia.

La Puglia è una delle più industrializzate regioni del meridione d’Italia, tanto da essere considerata “il tacco nero d’Europa” per l’inquinamento ambientale. L’esposizione ad inquinanti ambientali, la residenza in zone industrializzate ed il fumo di tabacco sono fattori di rischio di mortalità documentati per malattie respiratorie e tumori polmonari. Questo lavoro si propone di analizzare l’evoluzione temporale della mortalità per tumori polmonari e tumori respiratori nelle provincie pugliesi dal 1931 al 2010. Una ricostruzione storica di mortalità per un arco temporale così lungo è del tutto assente in letteratura ma può essere molto utili nella ricerca di una eventuale correlazione tra l’incremento di alcune patologie e la dispersione di fattori inquinanti nel nostro territorio.

Animal experimentation has played a key role in biomedical research throughout history, but it has also been a cause of heated public, scientific and philosophical debate for hundreds of years. The use of animals as models for study of human anatomy and physiology began in ancient Greece and reemerged in the Renaissance, to satisfy scientific enquiry. This technique laid the foundations of scientific medical revolution in the following centuries. Animal experimentation has now developed to the point that animal models are employed in all fields of biomedical research including, but not limited to, molecular biology, immunology and infectious disease, pharmacology, oncology, transplantology and animal behavior. This article reviews the use of animals in biomedical research from a historical viewpoint, with a look at the ethical controversy.

La provincia di Lecce è una delle zone a più alta prevalenza di patologie e tumori dell’apparato respiratorio. Viene qui presentata una ricostruzione storica dello sviluppo della tabacchicoltura nel Salento, effettuata tramite un’analisi descrittiva delle serie storiche di indicatori di coltura del tabacco, per fornire un ulteriore elemento di conoscenza sui potenziali fattori di rischio per le patologie e i tumori respiratori. Dal 1929 al 1993, la provincia di Lecce ha fornito tra il 75% e il 94% del tabacco coltivato in Puglia e fino al 1945 il 25% del tabacco nazionale. Dalla fine degli anni Sessanta, si è osservato un crescente aumento del rendimento unitario che nel 1991 raggiungeva i 21,5 quintali per ettaro nel Salento. Questa importante produzione di tabacco, associata in letteratura a un uso intensivo di pesticidi, potrebbe rappresentare un elemento da considerare in studi analitici quale potenziale determinante dell’elevata prevalenza di malattie respiratorie e di tumori polmonari nella popolazione maschile della provincia di Lecce.

The effects of an exposure to cadmium chloride 0.47 μM for 150 days were studied in kidneys of juveniles Sparus aurata by a multidisciplinary approach so to correlate uptake and detoxification potential to changes in brush border and glycocalyx sugar composition. Results demonstrated that cadmium concentration in kidney significantly increased from day 30 reaching a plateau on day 120 while metallothioneins reached a peak on day 90 and by day 120 were already decreasing to control values. Cytological damage was extensive on day 90, clearly detectable at both structural and ultrastructural levels, in tubular cells and brush-border. Staining with a panel of four lectins revealed a significant increase in N-Ac-Gal and a decrease in mannose in the glycocalyx and the tubular basal membranes. From day 120, when cadmium concentration was high and metallothionein concentration decreasing, a clear recovery was observed in tubular cells morphology and sugar composition. Possible significance of these apparently contrasting data are discussed.

Taranto is the most polluted area of Italy (and, probably, of Europe), characterized by a strong industrial presence since the early sixties. The pollutants involved in this study are carcinogens, mutagens, teratogens and neurotoxins. The target of this study is to look for possible temporal trends of leukemia mortality in this small province (no similar systematic studies are available), and to provide a historical, occupational, and gender interpretation of the results. In addition, a comparison with the overall Italian situation is presented. The study supports the association of larger leukemia mortality with residential proximity to sources of industrial pollutants, and emphasizes the urgency of an actual application of the existing regulations about pollutant emissions.

La serie storica individua una decrescita degli omicidi di donne a livello nazionale. I tassi mostrano che la decrescita interessa in modo più evidente Sud e Isole. La particolare dinamica degli omicidi di donne tra i 15 e i 49 anni, con un'inversione dei rapporti tra le aree geografiche del Paese, sembra indicare la particolare criticità delle relazioni uomo-donna nel periodo in cui è maggiore il ruolo dei fattori sessuali.

In this article, we are going to retrace the history of the Salento’s Mental Hospital, one of the largest psychiatric facilities in Southern Italy and we whilst addressing the use of somatic therapies in this institution. The Provincial Mental Hospital of Terra d’Otranto, established since 1897, started operation in1901, under the direction of Dr. Giovanni Libertini. In 1931, after the advent of fascism, with the split of the Lecce Province into three provinces (Lecce, Brindisi and Taranto), The Mental Hospital turned into a hospital consortium, called The Interprovincial Psychiatric Hospital of Salento (OPIS) and subsequently, from 1985 to 1998, The Psychiatric Hospital “Giovanni Libertini”. At The Interprovincial Psychiatric Hospital of Salento (O.P.I.S.) somatic therapies, and in particular Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT), were widely used. Afterwards, in the 1950s, with the advent of psychotropic drugs (neuroleptics, antidepressants, MAO inhibitors tricyclics, benzodiazepines), the success of somatic therapies and in particular of ECT decreased significantly. The recent renewed interest in somatic therapies - again considered in the most advanced scientific studies and used in a large number of renowned hospitals and universities - is linked to the considerable deepening of the biological knowledge of such therapies and to drug resistance of many psychiatric illnesses. Therefore, we considered it opportune to historically analyze the use of somatic therapies in one of the most important psychiatric institutions of Southern Italy.

This article examines the theme of suicide from a cultural-historical point of view, using art and literature as its sources, particularly in the nineteenth and twentieth century. Art and literature can be used as therapies and medications, as an excellent way of expressing existential distress that, in most cases, requires a symbolic and evocative language. The pain cannot be contained in a definition but rather in a story. So the truth of medical science needs another truth, one that includes the whole person, her psyche and her physicality. The theme of death and suicide concerns the essential questions of human life, issues which statistics, clinical and experimental researches do not address. The art and literature lay bare what a person feels, allowing immediate access to his experience. They can be a response to the suffering and be salvation and medicine, place of disclosure of the human labour on the disease, be it physical, psychological or existential. The modern age is dominated by a medical approach that explains the suicide as a result of a pathological derangement. For Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), suicide was the product of a mental illness. The author's aim is to underline how the artistic-literary language is a privileged instrument to study mankind's mood and existential status.

The historian Fielding Garrison wrote that the history of medicine is the history of mankind, as it encompasses all of human life. This means that the history of medicine encourages us to critically reflect not only on the information (the what, the world of facts) but also invites us to move towards understanding (the who, the world of stories). Next to the historical change, there is the anthropological duration with its baggage of immutable values that art brings to light. The merit of art is to focus not only on the biological aspects, but also on the social and emotional ones that define the mother/child relationship. The paintings that we have analyzed “speak” of care and caregiving, grief and suffering where maternity is experienced in solitude, in misery, in sickness. And it is to this latter aspect that we have drawn our attention. Most of the works are autobiographical or relate to events actually experienced by the artist. The theme of the wounded maternity has many facets, but all are united by the absence and loss of something precious: a son, a husband, health, affection.

Dal 1969, studi epidemiologici esaminavano in Puglia gli incrementi di mortalità per diverse cause, attribuibili ad inquinanti ambientali. È invece assente una ricostruzione storica degli indicatori di mortalità nei periodi precedenti. Scopo del presente lavoro è effettuare un’analisi dei trend di mortalità per tumori e patologie dell’apparato respiratorio nelle provincie pugliesi versus le macroripartizioni italiane, dal 1931 al 2010.