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Background: The definition of the eligibility criteria of newborn, infant, child, or adolescent patients for palliative care (PC) is complicated by the fact that these patients generally present with very specific case histories that make it inadvisable to directly adopt existing PC protocols devised for adult patients. Thus, the goal of this paper is to define a standard set of criteria for establishing pediatric palliative care (PPC) eligibility., Methods: The method adopted was that of the consensus conference. According to the guidelines issued by the Higher Institute of Health, the Board of the Italian Society for Palliative Care (i.e. steering committee) appointed a multidisciplinary group of eight health care professionals (i.e. doctors, nurses and psychologists) who worked from May 2014 to February 2016 to reach a consensus over PPC eligibility. This panel of relevant experts redacted a report summarizing all available scientific information concerning PPC, which was then submitted to the attention of a multidisciplinary jury composed of specialists and non-specialists of the field. The document thus produced was subsequently reviewed by an extended team of experts., Results: The consensus conference drafted a final document determining the guidelines for PPC eligibility of newborns, infants, children, and adolescents suffering from either oncological or non-oncological diseases., Conclusions: This report provides health care providers with practical guidelines on how to define the eligibility of pediatric patients for PPC. Given the current situation in Italy, these guidelines will be instrumental in assisting the implementation of adequate generalist and specialist PPC services as well as in helping policymakers draft and implement national legislation pertaining to PPC.

Objective: Neurodegenerative diseases are often characterized by the presence of intracellular or extracellular protein aggregates in the central nervous system. Mutations of TARDBP gene have been shown to cause Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis and have been reported to present with clinical heterogeneity including parkinsonism. TDP-43 pathology has been observed across a spectrum of neurodegenerative disorders, including Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease., Methods: In this study we screened 100 sporadic and 165 familial PD patients and control series (450) for the TARDBP gene. All cases and controls included in this study were born and living in Calabria., Results: The p.N267S heterozygous mutation was detected in one sporadic PD patient. The p.N267S mutation was not found in a control population of 450 healthy individuals and in our 165 familial PD., Conclusions: Sequencing of the TARDBP gene in our patient cohort identified one sporadic PD carrying the p.N267S mutation. This is the first analysis of TARDBP mutation in sporadic PD patient from South Italy., (Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

A "screening" done by the "Servizio Materno Infantile" of Modena relative to children from 6 to 12 years old during 1988-89 is described. The research is referred to 1454 children 6 years old attending the second year of the secondary school. For the evaluation of the level of the dental health have been used the Oms Index. The results are very comforting: the 54% of the 6 years old children have sound teeth, but from the dmft Index with a value of 1.6 comes out the trend not to cure the caries of the deciduous teeth. Very few are the cases of 6 years old children with caries of the permanent teeth. At 12 years the percentage of children with sound teeth is lower (34%), however analyzing the DMFT Index (1.9) appears a very high degree of attention towards the dental care.