Objectives. To assess admission rates to seven General Hospital Psychiatric Wards (GHPWs) located in the Lombardy Region in the 40 days after the start of Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) epidemic, compared to similar periods of 2020 and 2019. Methods. Anonymized data from the regional psychiatric care register have been obtained and analyzed. The seven GHPWs care for approximately 1.4 million inhabitants and have a total of 119 beds. Results. In the 40-day period (February 21–March 31, 2020) after the start of the COVID-19 epidemic in Italy, compared to a similar 40-day period prior to February 21, and compared to two 40-day periods of 2019, there has been a marked reduction in psychiatric admission rates. The reduction was explained by voluntary admissions, while there was not a noticeable reduction for involuntary admissions. The reduction was visible for all diagnostic groups, except for a group of ‘Other’ diagnoses, which includes anxiety disorders, neurocognitive disorders, etc. Conclusions. Large-scale pandemics can modify voluntary admission rates to psychiatric facilities in the early phases following pandemic onset. We suggest that the reduction in admission rates may be due to fear of hospitals, seen as possible sites of contagion, as well as to a change in thresholds of behavioral problems acting as a trigger for admission requests from family relatives or referrals from treating clinicians. It is unclear from the study whether the reduction in admissions was contributed to most by the current pandemic or the lockdown imposed due to the pandemic.

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This study compares the incidence of local and regional recurrence of breast cancer between two contiguous time windows in a homogeneous population of 137 patients who underwent fat tissue transplant after modified radical mastectomy. Median follow-up time was 7.6 years and the follow-up period was divided into two contiguous time windows, the first starting at the date of the radical mastectomy and ending at the first lipoaspirate grafting session and the second beginning at the time of the first lipoaspirate grafting session and ending at the end of the total follow-up time. Although this study did not employ an independent control group, the incidence of local recurrence of breast cancer was found to be comparable between the two periods and in line with data from similar patient populations enrolled in large multicenter clinical trials and who did not undergo postsurgical fat tissue grafting. Statistical comparison of disease-free survival curves revealed no significant differences in relapse rate between the two patient subgroups before fat grafting and after fat grafting. Although further confirmation is needed from multicenter randomized clinical trials, our results support the hypothesis that autologous lipoaspirate transplant combines striking regenerative properties with no or marginal effects on the probability of post-mastectomy locoregional recurrence of breast cancer.

We conducted a cross-sectional study of body fat distribution and metabolic variables and the interrelations among these factors in 134 women aged 18-71.9 y. Body fat distribution was measured with use of computerized tomography. A significant positive correlation was observed between age and visceral adipose tissue (VAT) and between VAT and body weight. When subjects were divided into five age groups, VAT values were significantly higher in older groups. Values for triacylglycerols, cholesterol, fasting glucose, 2-h glucose, and the sum of glucose values during an oral-glucose-tolerance test were significantly higher in older subjects. After adjustment for visceral fat, no significant differences in any metabolic variable studied, except cholesterol, were found across the five age groups. In conclusion, we found that regional body fat distribution in older women was different from that in younger subjects: older women had larger amounts o visceral fat. Values for metabolic variables were also higher in older subjects. Our data suggest that redistribution of body fat in older subjects is associated with changes in metabolic variables.