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C Cislaghi

Publications and source records attributed to C Cislaghi.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources
PubMed1990

Trend surface models in the representation and analysis of time factors in cancer mortality.

A method of graphic representation of time factors in cancer mortality is presented, based on different tonalities of grey applied to the surface of the matrix defined by various age-specific rates. It is illustrated using mortality data from cancers of the mouth or pharynx, oesophagus, larynx and lung in Italian and Swiss males. Progressively more complex regression surface equations are defined, on the basis of two independent variables (age and cohort) and a dependent one (each age-specific rate). General patterns of trends were thus identified, showing important similarities in cohort and period effects, but also noticeable differences in time-related factors in mortality from various neoplasms of the upper digestive and respiratory tract. For instance, there were declines in mortality from cancers of the mouth or pharynx in the oldest age groups, whereas rates were appreciably upwards at younger and middle age, particularly in Italy. Likewise, cancers of the oesophagus and, chiefly, of the larynx were substantially increasing, on a cohort basis, in oldest Italian males. Temporal pattern for laryngeal cancer in Italy was similar to that of lung cancer, thus suggesting that (cigarette) smoking has a greater impact on this cancer site as compared with alcohol. However, it is difficult to explain, on this basis alone, the totally diverging pattern for cancer of the larynx (downwards) and of the lung (upwards) observed among older Swiss males. These examples indicate that trend surface models are a useful summary guide to illustrate and understand the general patterns of age, period and cohort effects in cancer mortality.

Adult↗
PubMed1989

Descriptive epidemiology of Hodgkin's disease in Italy.

Death certification data on Hodgkin's disease in Italy over the period 1955-84 were studied in terms of age-standardized and age-specific national trends, and of geographical variation in mortality. There were substantial declines in death rates from the early 1970's onward, which can be largely attributed to therapeutic improvements. These led to avoidance of about 350 deaths, with a total 950 reported, which is probably the major absolute therapeutic advance identified for any cancer site. The declines started earlier in childhood and young adult age, and were restricted to population below age 60. The age distribution of the disease was different in the two sexes, since the age curve for males showed steady rises up to age 75, whereas that for females was clearly bimodal, with a peak around age 30, and another at oldest age. This divergent pattern is consistent with different exposure to (infectious) agent(s) in children of the two sexes, but also to occupational exposures potentially related to the risk of the disease. Examination of rates in various geographical areas showed generally higher rates in the North, and a few provinces with exceedingly high mortality in the central part of Northern Italy, particularly in a chiefly rural province (Mantua). This excess mortality (and, more in general, the observation that rates for Northern Italy are higher than in any other area of the EEC) could not be explained by obvious diagnostic or classification problems, were evident in both sexes, appeared to be consistent over the last decade and are reflected in available Italian cancer registration data.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1988

Cancer mortality in migrant populations within Italy.

Italian death certification rates from all causes of death, all diseases of the circulatory system, all neoplasms, and cancers of the upper digestive and respiratory tract, stomach, intestines, lung and breast in middle age (45-64 years) were analyzed according to selected geographic areas of birth and residence at death. For total cancer mortality and most neoplasms considered, the rates in middle age were closer to those of place of birth than to those of area of residence, although this pattern was more evident for some sites (e.g., mouth or pharynx, esophagus, larynx, stomach or bladder) than for others (e.g., intestines or breast). In most cases, migration had an adverse effect on cancer rates, and the lowest mortality was reported among stable populations (i.e., those with the same area of birth and death). These findings are discussed in relation to the major migration fluxes within Italy during the current century. Moreover, these analyses give information on the quality of Italian cancer death certification, since the observation that area of birth is often a more important determinant of cancer rates than area of residence provides indirect evidence that cancer death certification in various Italian geographic areas is satisfactorily reliable and consistent.

Adult↗
PubMed1988

Descriptive epidemiology of intestinal cancer in Italy.

Trends in the death rates from cancers of the intestine (including colon and rectum) in Italy from 1956 to 1981 were analyzed with a standard cross-sectional approach and a log-linear age/period/cohort model. In both sexes there were steady increases in mortality rates between the middle 1950s and the middle 1970s, chiefly explainable in terms of cohort effects. This was followed by a leveling off and stabilization, starting from the younger age groups and more evident in women. The analyses of the geographic distribution of intestinal cancer mortality in the 95 Italian provinces during 1975 to 1977 showed higher rates in the north of the country and in large urban concentrations, and a bimodal distribution of mortality rates, whose minimum corresponded to a distinct north/south separation. Trend surface models fitted to intestinal cancer standardized mortality ratios showed a high determination coefficient even for the simplest models. Residuals, corresponding to outliers, were scattered in a few northern and central areas. In addition, mortality rates for cancers of the intestine in middle age people were considered according to geographic area of birth and residence at death. In both sexes rates of migrant populations were influenced both by area of birth and residence, and, in particular, there was a wide-spread unfavorable effect of residence on migrants from the South to the North (the major migrant flux in Italy). The temporal and geographic variations in intestinal cancer rates observed in this study indicate that Italy may well be a particularly interesting situation for etiologic investigations of colorectal cancers.

Adult↗
PubMed1988

The application of trend surface models to the analysis of time factors in Swiss cancer mortality.

To study different temporal components on cancer mortality (age, period and cohort) methods of graphic representation were applied to Swiss mortality data from 1950 to 1984. Maps using continuous slopes ("contour maps") and based on eight tones of grey according to the absolute distribution of rates were used to represent the surfaces defined by the matrix of various age-specific rates. Further, progressively more complex regression surface equations were defined, on the basis of two independent variables (age/cohort) and a dependent one (each age-specific mortality rate). General patterns of trends in cancer mortality were thus identified, permitting definition of important cohort (e.g., upwards for lung and other tobacco-related neoplasms, or downwards for stomach) or period (e.g., downwards for intestines or thyroid cancers) effects, besides the major underlying age component. For most cancer sites, even the lower order (1st to 3rd) models utilised provided excellent fitting, allowing immediate identification of the residuals (e.g., high or low mortality points) as well as estimates of first-order interactions between the three factors, although the parameters of the main effects remained still undetermined. Thus, the method should be essentially used as summary guide to illustrate and understand the general patterns of age, period and cohort effects in (cancer) mortality, although they cannot conceptually solve the inherent problem of identifiability of the three components.

Age Factors↗
PubMed1987

Birth cohort, time, and age effects in Italian cancer mortality.

Italian death certification data from 1955 to 1979 for total cancer mortality and 30 cancer sites in the population aged 25 to 74, were analyzed using a log-linear Poisson model to isolate the effects of birth cohort, calendar period of death, and age. The most frequent cohort pattern was characterized by increases up to the generations born between 1920 and 1930, followed by stabilization or a slight decrease. This pattern was evident for total cancer mortality in men, and for several common sites, including larynx, lung, esophagus, bladder, female breast, and ovary. Only four sites (pancreas, pleura, intestines in both sexes, and kidney in men) showed cohort values still rising in more recent generations. Stable cohort and period of death curves were observed for cancers of the prostate and testis, whereas trends were steadily going down for neoplasms of the stomach, and (cervix) uteri. Finally, there were a few discontinuous trends (e.g., in the case of brain neoplasms, leukemias, and lymphomas), which probably reflect different effects of improvements in diagnosis and/or treatment. Period of death values increased for lung and other tobacco related sites (chiefly in males) and, up to the early 1970s, for a few other common sites, including intestines, and the female breast. Downward trends over the calendar period were evident for cancers of the stomach and of the (cervix) uteri. Therefore, total cancer mortality trends over the calendar period of death were moderately increasing for men, and slightly decreasing for women.

Adult↗
PubMed1986

Descriptive epidemiology of gastric cancer in Italy.

National trends in death certification rates from cancer of the stomach in Italy over the period 1955 to 1979 were analyzed using a standard cross-sectional approach and a log-linear Poisson model to isolate the effects of birth cohort, calendar period, and age. Overall, age-standardized death certification rates decreased from 47.04 to 30.74/100,000 males (average annual rate of change, assuming that the decrease has been constant, -1.8%) and from 34.55 to 19.27/100,000 females (average annual rate of change -2.4%). The decreases were even larger in middle age for both sexes. Both cohort and period of death curves were markedly downwards. However, cohort values did not decrease for generations born around the second world war (1935-1945), thus indirectly confirming the importance of (dietary) habits in childhood on subsequent gastric cancer risk. Further, the geographic distribution of certified mortality from gastric cancer in the 95 Italian provinces over the period 1975 to 1977 was analyzed. Death certification rates were about 10% lower for both sexes in the 14 provinces including the largest urban concentrations (over 250,000 inhabitants) than in the remaining areas. This finding might be related to earlier availability of modern food processing and storage in urban areas. It is, however, more difficult to explain the lower mortality rates (about 50% in both sexes) in the southern compared with the central and northern areas, since southern Italy is the less developed part of the country. Likewise, there appears to be at present little satisfactory explanation for the several clusters of exceedingly high mortality areas scattered in northern and central Italy, since some of these areas are several hundred kilometers apart, and there is no obvious common denominator in diet or other environmental factors that may explain their higher gastric cancer mortality rates.

Adult↗
PubMed1986

Cancer mortality in broad Italian geographical areas, 1975-1977.

Death certification rates from various cancers or groups of cancers in broad Italian geographical areas (North/Center/South) over the period 1975-1977 were analyzed. In both sexes, there was a clear North/South gradient, with considerably higher rates in the North for total cancer mortality as well as for most common neoplasms. The geographical variation was more marked in males (North/South ratio for total cancer mortality = 1.75 at all ages and 1.70 truncated 35-64 years) than in females (ratio = 1.48 at all ages and 1.28 truncated 35-64). Although, in general terms, the present results confirm previous analyses of cancer mortality in Italy, a few interesting tendencies should be noted. First, the geographical differences in the mid-late 1970's were much more marked for tobacco-related cancers (a factor of over two in males in the North/South ratio) than for other chiefly epithelial carcinomas or nonepithelial cancers. In general, variations for nontobacco-related cancers tended to level off over more recent calendar periods. However, there was little tendency towards decreasing differences in gastric cancer mortality (which was markedly elevated in the North and Center), at least in males. During the 1970's death certification rates from cancer of the (cervix) uteri decreased in northern and central more than in southern Italy. This pattern of trends may have been influenced by a different impact of cervical screening in various areas of the country.

Adult↗
PubMed1986

Mortality from alcohol related disease in Italy.

Trends in death certification rates from the five major alcohol related causes of death in Italy (cancers of the mouth or pharynx, oesophagus, larynx, liver and cirrhosis of the liver) were analysed over a period (1955-79) in which per capita alcohol consumption almost trebled. Age standardised mortality from liver cirrhosis almost doubled in males and increased over 70% in females. In males, mortality from cancers of the upper digestive or respiratory tract showed increases of between 27% and 44%, and liver cancer increased by over 100%. In the late 1970s, the four alcohol related cancer sites accounted for about 12% of all cancer deaths in males and 4.5% in females. Mortality from liver cirrhosis alone accounted for 4.8% of all deaths in males (9.2% of manpower years lost) and 2.3% in females (6.3% manpower years lost) in females. These figures were even higher in selected areas of north eastern Italy, where alcohol consumption is greater. In absolute terms, the upward trends observed correspond to about 10,000 excess deaths per year in the late 1970s compared with rates observed two decades earlier and are thus second only to the increase in tobacco related causes of death over the same calendar period.

Adult↗
PubMed1982

Comparative completeness and correspondence of cancer mortality data as collected by ISTAT and Cancer Registries.

The authors have compared individual cancer mortality records from the file of the Central Statistics Office (ISTAT) with those of the Cancer Registries of Varese and Torino for the period July-December 1976. Most diagnoses ascertained by the Cancer Registries were histologically confirmed. The results showed a high degree of reciprocal completeness (over 90%) for both systems (Cancer Registries and mortality statistics) and a satisfactory level of concordance (75% at Varese, 70% at Torino). The discrepancies, concentrated in certain nosologic codes, were analyzed. The conclusions suggest that the correspondence between mortality statistics and clinical diagnoses is high, at least in the geographical areas examined.

Evaluation Studies as Topic↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Exploratory tools for disease mapping in geographical epidemiology.

In the present paper a new shrinkage estimator of relative risk, useful in disease mapping, is compared with the empirical and full Bayes estimators, using death certificate data for lung cancer (males and females) and breast cancer (females) 1982-1988 in the Emilia-Romagna region (Italy). The estimates are obtained averaging the relative risks obtained from recursive partitioning of the set of observed values. The number of partitions is fixed in advance and behaves as a smoothing parameter, the lower the number the higher the degree of shrinkage toward the overall mean of the observed values.

Algorithms↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Cancer mortality in Italy, 1994, and an overview of trends from 1955 to 1994.

BACKGROUND: Data and statistics are presented on cancer death certification in Italy, updating previous publications covering the period 1955-1993. METHODS: Data for 1994 and the quinquennium 1990-94 subdivided into 30 cancer sites are presented in 8 tables, including age- and sex-specific absolute and percentage frequencies of cancer deaths, and crude, age-specific and age-standardized rates, at all ages and truncated for the 35-64 year age group. Trends in age-standardized rates for major cancer sites are plotted from 1955 to 1994. RESULTS: The age-standardized (world standard) death certification rates from all neoplasms steadily declined from the peak of 199.2/100,000 males in 1988 to 186.3 in 1994, and in females from 102.5 in 1989 to 98.6 in 1994. Ever larger was the decline in truncated rates, for males from the peak of 275.1/100,000 in 1983 to 223.2 (-19%) in 1994, and for females from 151.6/100,000 in 1987 to 136.4 (-10%). A major component of the favourable cancer mortality trends in males was lung cancer (accounting for 31,000 deaths in both sexes combined in 1994), whose overall age-standardized rates declined from 60.3 in 1987-89 to 54.6/100,000 males in 1994 (-9%), and from the peak of 96.7 in 1983 at ages 35 to 64 to 72.7 in 1994 (-25%). In contrast, female lung cancer rates have remained stable from 1992 onwards, but have increased from 7.2 to 7.7 at all ages and from 10.6 to 11.0 at age 35-64 between 1985-89 and 1990-94. These different trends in the two sexes reflect the patterns and trends in smoking among Italian males and females. CONCLUSIONS: Cancer mortality trends in Italy over the period 1990-94 were relatively favourable, mainly reflecting the decline in lung cancer rates in males, together with the persistent declines in gastric cancer in both sexes and in cervix uteri for women. Continuous advancements were registered for neoplasms amenable to treatment, essentially testicular cancer, Hodgkin's disease and childhood leukaemias. The major unfavourable trends were observed for non Hodgkin's lymphomas, and require therefore further monitoring, besides a clearer understanding of their determinants. Italy maintains an intermediate level of cancer mortality on a European scale, suggesting that further progress is possible, mostly for tobacco-related neoplasms in males.

Adolescent↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Pollen mixtures used as health food may be a harmful source of allergens.

We describe herein one case of systemic anaphylaxis due to the ingestion of an undefined mixture of pollens, sold as a dietary supplement. The patient, who suffered from rhinoconjunctivitis due to grass pollen (with sensitization to several trees), had a severe episode of anaphylaxis immediately after eating this health food. The episode required emergency care. We attempted to study the pollen mixture responsible, but no pollen granules could be identified. We prepared a solid phase with the pollen mixture, and we observed a RAST positivity with the patient's serum and pools of sera containing specific IgE to trees. Furthermore, a RAST-inhibition assay of the patient's serum showed highly positive results with grasses, birch, alder and Compositae. Therefore, we concluded that the pollen mixture contained determinants capable of cross-reacting with the patient's IgE. This case report is evidence of the possible risks due to the use of undefined herbal products by allergic patients.

Allergens↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Anaphylactic reaction to the ingestion of raw onion. A case report.

A case of severe systemic reactions (intense itching, urticaria, confusion, blurred vision, transient loss of consciousness, sweating, tachycardia) after ingestion of raw or lightly-cooked onion is described. The patient, a 44-year-old woman, had no troubles with well-cooked onions. Differently from the cases of sensitivity to onion described in literature, this patient was monosensitized, being skin tests negative to pollens, inhalants and other foods. The patient had 3.7 kU/L of onion-specific segum IgE, as determined by REAST. The density of onion-specific IgE (calculated as percent ratio to total IgE) was 30.8%. The reactivity of patient's serum IgE towards thermolabile and thermostable components has been tested with unheated and heated (30' at 100 degrees C) onion extracts bound to polystyrene beads and tested in the RAST system. Unheated extract resulted positive in class 2, heated extract negative, demonstrating that this patients, differently from similar clinical cases described in literature, had IgE antibodies recognizing just thermolabile onion fraction. This is the first case described in literature of a monosensitization to the thermolabile component of onion, negative also to related foods (Liliacee) and characterized by severe systemic reactions. The importance of specific-IgE density (%) rather their absolute amount (kU/L) as parameter predictive for the clinical severity of allergic reactions is discussed.

Adult↗