Despite clinical staff awareness of patients' status and perceptions, CINV still represents a clinical problem. This study confirms that particular attention should be paid to anxiety due to its key role in CINV development.

It is partially unknown whether the immune response to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS‐CoV‐2) infection persists with time. To address this issue, we detected the presence of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in different groups of individuals previously diagnosed with COVID-19 disease (group 1 and 2), or potentially exposed to SARS-CoV-2 infection (group 3 and 4), and in a representative group of individuals with limited environmental exposure to the virus due to lockdown restrictions (group 5). The primary outcome was specific anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in the different groups assessed by qualitative and quantitative analysis at baseline, 3 and 6 months follow-up. The seroconversion rate at baseline test was 95% in group 1, 61% in group 2, 40% in group 3, 17% in group 4 and 3% in group 5. Multivariate logistic regression analysis revealed male gender, close COVID-19 contact and presence of COVID-19 related symptoms strongly associated with serological positivity. The percentage of positive individuals as assessed by the qualitative and quantitative tests was superimposable. At the quantitative test, the median level of SARS-CoV-2 antibody levels measured in positive cases retested at 6-months increased significantly from baseline. The study indicates that assessing antibody response to SARS-CoV-2 through qualitative and quantitative testing is a reliable disease surveillance tool.

Objective: Despite an increasing role in selecting and evaluating treatments, Patient Associations (PAs) do not yet play a significant role in pharmacovigilance (PV). The Patient Safety Council (PSC) is an initiative that brings together five PAs (AISM, AMICI Onlus, Fedemo, La Lampada di Aladino, Walce). The aim of PSC is to encourage PAs to play an active role in patient education, reporting Adverse Drug Reactions (ADRs) and assessing the safety of treatments.To this aim, PSC carried out a survey to assesse the level of information on PV among the members of the five associations and their interest in getting more information on PV. Methods: A questionnaire was administered to patients recruited by the five PAs. The questions were grouped into three clusters exploring: 1) Level of knowledge of patients about PV, 2) Sources of information and their behavior regarding reporting ADRs 3) Interest in receiving more information on PV.Results: The survey received 1,368 replies. In the first cluster, more than 80% of the participants stated that they had little or no knowledge of PV. In the second cluster, 35% of the patients never reported any ADR they had experienced. Among those who reported ADRs, they mainly contacted their specialist (46%) or general practitioner (35%). Most of the patients were not aware they could report ADRs directly to the Competent Authority. Finally, more than 80% of the patients stated they would like to receive more information on PV.Conclusions: There is an unmet need in the field of information and education of patients regarding PV. There is also a great deal of interest among the patients to be informed on PV. PAs could play a significant role in patient education and reporting of ADRs to the Competent Authorities.

Considering all the smoking-related side effects, greater efforts should be made in order to better support patients in smoking cessation. Smoking should be considered as a real physical disorder and similar surveys should be encouraged with the aim to fight the 'stigma' of smoking that still exists among patients.

No abstract