Background Psoriasis (Ps) is a chronic systemic autoimmune disease associated with pruritus in 64–98% of patients. However, few modestly sized studies assess factors associated with psoriatic pruritus. Objective To investigate factors associated with Ps pruritus intensity. Methods Psoriasis patients 18 years or older seen in one of 155 centres in Italy between September 2005 and 2009 were identified from the Italian PsoCare registry. Patients without cutaneous psoriasis and those with missed information on pruritus were excluded. Results We identified 10 802 patients, with a mean age 48.8 ± 14.3 years. Mild itch was present in 33.2% of patients, moderate in 34.4%, severe in 18.7% and very severe in 13.7%. Higher itch intensity was associated with female gender, lower educational attainment compared to university degree, pustular psoriasis, psoriasis on the head, face, palmoplantar areas, folds and genitalia, more severe disease, disease duration <15 years, and no or few prior systemic treatments. Limitations Effects of specific medication on itch were not assessed. Conclusions Pruritus should be evaluated during psoriasis visits, and physicians should be aware of patients at higher risk for itch. Further studies are needed to assess the effects of medications on itch, and establish therapy for psoriasis patients with persistent itch.

There is now an increasing body of evidence to support the practice of allergen-specific sublingualswallow immunotherapy (SLIT) in the treatment of IgE-mediated respiratory allergies. Recent studies on traditional injection therapy have pointed out that this form of treatment is not only capable to decrease actual allergic symptoms, but may also have long-term clinical and preventive effects and may influence atopy natural history. In the year 2000, our group published a retrospective, multicenter study showing the efficacy and safety of SLIT in a survey of 302 patients. We now carried out a second study on the same patients, with the aim of investigating long-term and preventive effects of SLIT. Beside the well-known safety and efficacy of this treatment (80.8 % of patients reported clinical benefits), SLIT proved also to elicit long term clinical effects: over a mean follow-up of 11.6 months after the end of treatment, 80.8 % of patients stilI mantained the previously achieved benefits. During the follow-up period, only 1% of nonasthma patients reported an onset of respiratory symptoms, and only 9.6 % of patients undergoing new skin tests showed new sensitizations. All the clinical benefits were strongly linked to the length of treatment: patients with long-lasting benefits were treated for a mean length of 29.1 months, while patients showing a return to pre-SLIT condition were treated for a mean 13.3 months. SLIT can obtain long-term and preventive effects so far attributed to injection immunotherapy.

Intravesical bacillus Calmette-Guerin appears to be the most effective conservative treatment for patients with stage T1 grade 3 bladder cancer.

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Doxorubicin was given by short i.v. infusion (dose range 25-72 mg/m2) to 18 patients who underwent three to seven successive courses of chemotherapy (total, 57 courses). Plasma levels of doxorubicin and its major metabolite doxorubicinol were determined by high-performance liquid chromatography over a 48-h period after the infusion. Pharmacokinetic parameters for the parent drug and its metabolite were calculated for each course of treatment. The results show considerable inter- and intraindividual variations for most parameters. The coefficients of variation (CV) ranged from 37% to 93% (inter-individual) and from 6% to 59% (intra-individual). Nevertheless, we observed a good stability over successive courses for terminal half-life in six patients (CV, 6%-25%) and for clearance and AUC in four subjects (CV, 10%-22%). The ratio of the AUCs for doxorubicinol: doxorubicin averaged 0.514. The pharmacokinetic pattern of doxorubicinol was biphasic in plasma of the majority of patients. We propose a model for curve-fitting of these metabolite plasma concentrations that is based on two successive releases of the compound in the plasma compartment, separated by a lag time.