Focus on

NSAIDs in patients with COVID-19: what evidence is available?
Declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization in mid-March 2020, by 3 May 2020 SARS-CoV-21 had more than 3,356,000 confirmed cases and about 238,700 official deaths.2 The priority of health authorities is to limit the spread of the virus by avoiding overcrowding of hospitals to provide the...
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ACE inhibitors and ARBs in COVID-19: what risks and benefits?
According to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, since 31 December 2019 to 8 May 2020 the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic led to more than 3.8 million infections and 269,068 deaths.1 There are conflicting assumptions about the possible adverse or protective effects of antihypertensive drugs...
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Adverse events from cannabis medical use
Indications for medical useTetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and cannabidiol (CBD) are the main active substances of cannabis sativa and among the pharmacological targets have both cannabinoid receptors (CB1 and CB2), the peptide receptor related to the calcitonin gene, the ligand dependent ion channels...
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Parkinson’s therapies and pathological gambling
Pathological gambling is attracting increasing attention for high prevalence, involving 0.4-2.2% of the Italian population.1 In the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), pathological gambling is among substance use and addiction related disorders and is defined as “...
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Vitamin D: An important ally?
Vitamin D is commonly referred to as a group of hormone function secosteroids, of which the metabolically active form is 1,25-OH.1 Vitamin D is one of the drugs that has undergone the largest increase in prescription in recent years in Italy, rising from 6.2% in 2013 to 12.6% in 2017.2 The...
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Suspension of the marketing authorisation and restrictions on the use of quinolone and fluoroquinolone antibiotics: maximum caution when prescribing
A widely used class of antibioticsQuinolones and fluoroquinolones are broad-spectrum synthetic antimicrobials that are highly effective in treating a wide range of infections. Although these drugs represent a class of antibiotics of considerable medical importance, their use as a first-line...
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Adverse reactions in Emergency Room and prevention: the MEREAFAPS project
The MEREAFAPS project (Epidemiological Monitoring of Adverse Drug Reactions and Events in Emergency Room) was launched in Lombardy in 2006. The rationale is simple: the vast majority of adverse drug reactions that occur at home take the patient to the emergency room, where doctors and nurses,...
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Pharmacovigilance and Pharmacogenetics: Considerations for the Present and the Future
Inter-individual variability in drug response is one of the most relevant issues for the proper management of patients in clinical practice. The team of health professionals is faced with possible unexpected variations in individual responses to medicinal products responsible for therapeutic...
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The aspirin balance in primary cardiovascular prevention
The use of aspirin (ASA) in the primary prevention of cardiovascular diseases has been discussed in recent years for the uncertainty deriving from the results of the studies, so much so that the most recent guidelines do not recommend their use1. The variegated set of major cardiovascular events...
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The safety profile of direct oral anticoagulants
Direct oral anticoagulants (DOACs), also known as New Oral Anticoagulants (NAOs), have for the first time provided a therapeutic alternative to vitamin K antagonists (VKAs), of which warfarin is the prototype, indicating neither inferiority nor superiority in the prevention of stroke in case of non...
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