Breast cancer screening adhesion among migrants: a matter of communication strategy?

Background

Migrants’ engagement to cancer screening programs is a relevant issue for universalistic health systems. To increase breast cancer screening coverage among migrant women, a public-private partnership involving a multidisciplinary team of Primary Care, Public Health, Hospital and private social workers has been built up in a district in Italy. The team worked in two steps, planning health promotion (HP) meetings addressing women in refugees’ reception programs and a web-based workshop involving intercultural mediators (IMs) and community health promoters.

Objectives

The workshop, involving 10 professionals among IMs and community health promoters, realized in 3 online meetings during March ‘22, aimed at identifying communication tools to enable migrants’ participation to breast cancer screening and increasing health literacy (HL) and cultural competence (CC) among the team. A participatory approach, supported by learning methods, such as storytelling and role-play, has been adopted to identify the major barriers to access to screening and public health messages. Participants worked on critical words and concepts, highlighted during HP meetings, accounting for HL, literacy, language skills, communication techniques and different perspectives about health and prevention.

Results

Several barriers, such as lack of knowledge on preventive initiatives and different approaches to health, decrease the perception of cancer risk. Others, like family and work duties, influence the adhesion. Fear or shame about the exam and linguistic issues are further hampering factors. Participants pointed out text, audio and video messages, in Italian and native plain language, as useful tools to explain the screening procedure and give relevant and practical information supported by simple and clear illustrations to diffuse via WhatsApp.

Conclusions

The intervention enabled the team to improve HL and CC defining suitable communication strategies for cancer screening programs.

Key messages

Self-cleaning and self-sanitizing coatings on plastic fabrics: design, manufacture and performance

Self-cleaning and self-sanitizing coatings are of utmost interest in several manufacturing domains. In particular, fabrics and textile materials are often pre-treated by impregnation or incorporation with antimicrobial pesticides for protection purposes against bacteria and fungi that are pathogenic for man or other animals. In this respect, the present investigation deals with the design and manufacture of self-cleaning and self-sanitizing coatings on plastic fabrics. The functionalization of the coatings was yield by incorporating active inorganic matter alone (i.e., photo-catalytic TiO2 anatase and Ag(+) ions) inside an organic inorganic hybrid binder. The achieved formulations were deposited on coextruded polyvinylchloride-polyester fabrics by air-mix spraying and left to dry at ambient temperature. The performance of the resulting coatings were characterized for their self-cleaning and self-sanitizing ability according to standardized testing procedure and/or applicable international regulations.

Autoimmune lymphoproliferative syndrome and non-Hodgkin lymphoma: what 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography/computed tomography can do in the management of these patients? Suggestions from a case report

A young patient with undefined autoimmune lymphoproliferative syndrome (ALPS-U) and low back pain underwent a CT and MRI study that showed enhancing vertebral lesions, some pulmonary nodules and diffuse latero-cervical lymphadenopathy. A (18)F-FDG-PET/CT scan showed many areas of intense (18)F-FDG uptake in multiple vertebrae, in some ribs, in the sacrum, in the liver, in both lungs, in multiple lymph nodes spread in the cervical, thoracic and abdominal chains. A bone marrow biopsy showed a "lymphomatoid granulomatosis", a rare variant of B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL). After the treatment, the (18)F-FDG-PET/CT scan showed a complete metabolic response.

Amenorrhea in eating disorders: poor stability of symptom after a one-year treatment

OBJECTIVE

To examine whether patients with Eating Disorders (ED) who restore menses differ from those who remain amenorrheic after treatment and to provide longitudinal data about this debated criterion of Anorexia Nervosa (AN).

METHODS

184 outpatients were recruited: 50 patients with AN Restrictive type, 75 amenorrheic Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified (EDNOS) patients, 24 patients who recovered from AN with persistent amenorrhea, and 35 amenorrheic patients without ED. All participants were clinically assessed by psychiatrists and gynaecologists at the beginning of treatment and at the one-year follow-up. They also completed several psychometric tests: Eating Disorder Inventory-2, Temperament and Character Inventory, and Beck Depression Inventory.

RESULTS

After treatment, a large portion of the sample resumed menses but very few recovered completely from the ED. No psychopathological variables could clearly predict the recovery of menses in the different groups. However, Body Mass Index and some biological variables were associated with restoration of menses in ED patients.

CONCLUSION

Resumption of menses was not associated with a less severe eating symptomatology at the beginning of treatment nor with unequivocal psychopathological changes after treatment. It is important that clinicians consider not only the presence or absence of regular menses but also that they improve both ED screening and assessment in amenorrheic patients. Amenorrhea does not seem to represent a specific predictor of severity of illness or to show prognostic value.

A comparative study of qualitative immunochemical screening assays for the combined measurement of T-2/HT-2 in cereals and cereal-based products

Many different immunochemical platforms exist for the screening of naturally occurring contaminants in food from the low cost enzyme linked immunosorbent assays (ELISA) to the expensive instruments such as optical biosensors based on the phenomenon of surface plasmon resonance (SPR). The primary aim of this study was to evaluate and compare a number of these platforms to assess their accuracy and precision when applied to naturally contaminated samples containing HT-2/T-2 mycotoxins. Other important factors considered were the speed of analysis, ease of use (sample preparation techniques and use of the equipment) and ultimately the cost implications. The three screening procedures compared included an SPR biosensor assay, a commercially available ELISA and an enzymelinked immunomagnetic electrochemical array (ELIME array). The qualitative data for all methods demonstrated very good overall agreements with each other, however on comparison with mass spectrometry confirmatory results, the ELISA and SPR assay performed slightly better than the ELIME array, exhibiting an overall agreement of 95.8% compared to 91.7%. Currently, SPR is more costly than the other two platforms and can only be used in the laboratory whereas in theory both the ELISA and ELIME array are portable and can be used in the field, but ultimately this is dependent on the sample preparation techniques employed. Sample preparative techniques varied for all methods evaluated, the ELISA was the most simple to perform followed by that of the SPR method. The ELIME array involved an additional clean-up step thereby increasing both the time and cost of analysis. Therefore in the current format, field use would not be an option for the ELIME array. In relation to speed of analysis, the ELISA outperformed the other methods.