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. An annual school-based anti-smoking program involves about 10,000 students aged four to 18 and their teachers. Meetings are delivered by experts to groups of 20 to 40 students with the aid of specific audiovisual material, which are periodically updated. Additional informative material, leaflets, and posters are distributed to both schoolchildren and teachers. Another educational program on primary prevention of smoking-related health hazards is addressed to military recruits, career soldiers, and medical officers. It consists of several initiatives: training of military doctors and nurses, lectures to military recruits, and distribution of informative material in the barracks. An annual meeting is organized to discuss program implementation and results. Surveys are carried out by distributing an anonymous questionnaire to health professionals in several Italian hospitals to assess the smoking habits of doctors and their attitudes and practices towards counseling patients against smoking. The results show marked differences in smoking habits in the cities under study. Annually since 1983, an updated course is organized and addressed to teachers of primary and secondary schools in Genoa. The aim of the course is to train school personnel and to help them to implement prevention programs in the schools, with the aid of experts in the field of prevention. A series of initiatives are addressed to women at different ages to sensitize them not only to the more common tobacco risks but also those regarding pregnancy, oral contraception, and so on. The survey was conducted on a representative sample of 12- to 65-year-old female population groups. It is the first of this kind in Italy to ascertain trends in smoking behavior among Italian women in relation to age, educational achievement, and occupation.

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. Data show the long term efficacy of school based smoking prevention programmes and underline their importance even if the methodologies can be different in the various countries. Other data show that the percentage of young smokers is increasing during the last three years; for this reason it is necessary to implement everywhere new programmes against smoking.

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. A number of these 223 radiation hybrids, whose detailed characterization has not been previously reported, represent a resource for the rapid isolation of new DNA markers or coding sequences from specific regions of chromosome 16 where human disease genes are already known to map.

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 = 0.46, P less than 0.0001), but there was considerable scatter amongst the data. The [3H]TdR LI of primary and of metastatic lesions belonged to the same proliferation classes in only 47% of the cases. Higher or lower [3H]TdR LI values, categorized on the basis of the tertiles of the frequency distribution, occurred in the node metastasis than in the primary tumour in an almost similar percentage of the remaining cases. Menopause, receptor status and pathological features did not affect interlesion kinetic patterns. The prognostic role of the proliferative activity of the two different lesions was investigated on 107 patients with stage II tumours homogeneously treated with surgery and systemic adjuvant therapy. Relapse-free survival at 3 years was significantly affected by the proliferative activity of the primary tumour but not by that of the lymph node metastasis.

Heterogeneity of mRNA expression in Italian fucosidosis patients.

Genomic DNA and mRNA from six unrelated Italian patients affected with fucosidosis were analyzed using two probes (AF3 and AF11B) of partial length cDNA coding for the lysosomal enzyme alpha-L-fucosidase. DNA from patient 2, digested with EcoRI, showed a variant pattern of hybridization caused by the loss of an EcoRI site. The same patient showed a markedly decreased amount of mRNA on Northern blot hybridization. Among the remaining patients, who showed no variation at the DNA level, two apparently lacked mRNA for alpha-L-fucosidase whereas the other three showed a transcript similar in size and amount to that observed in controls. These data confirm the genetic heterogeneity of the molecular defects causing fucosidosis in Italy.

Comparative analysis of different approaches to investigate cell kinetics.

The potential of different methods to investigate proliferative activity of cell populations was analysed for non-Hodgkin's lymphomas. Cells in S phase and all cycling cells were determined on cell suspensions obtained from fresh lymph node material by [3H]-thymidine autoradiography [( 3H]TdR LI), a monoclonal antibody to bromodeoxyuridine (BrdU LI), and the monoclonal antibody Ki67. A good correlation was observed between the values of [3H]TdR LI and BrdU LI (rs = 0.90; P less than 0.01), [3H]TdR LI and S phase (rs = 0.62; P less than 0.01) and [3H]TdR LI and Ki67 (rs = 0.64; P less than 0.01) in individual lymphomas. Using the median values obtained from the different approaches as cut-off points to define slowly and rapidly proliferating tumours, the best agreement was observed between [3H]TdR LI and BrdU LI (91%) and poorer agreements, even though statistically significant, were observed between [3H]TdR LI and S phase (73%) or Ki67 (76%). In conclusion, the kinetic information derived from different approaches was more or less concordant and newly proposed approaches should be directly and carefully verified for their prognostic relevance before using them as alternatives to conventional methods.