University of Milano-Bicocca

About: University of Milano-Bicocca is a education organization based out in Milan, Italy. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Blood pressure. The organization has 8972 authors who have published 22322 publications receiving 620484 citations. The organization is also known as: Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca & Universita degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca.

Credibility in social media: opinions, news, and health information—a survey

Abstract: In the Social Web scenario, where large amounts of User Generated Content diffuse through Social Media, the risk of running into misinformation is not negligible For this reason, assessing and mining the credibility of both sources of information and information itself constitute nowadays a fundamental issue Credibility, also referred as believability, is a quality perceived by individuals, who are not always able to discern with their cognitive capacities genuine information from the fake one For this reason, in the recent years several approaches have been proposed to automatically assess credibility in Social Media Most of them are based on data-driven models, ie, they employ machine-learning techniques to identify misinformation, but recently also model-driven approaches are emerging, as well as graph-based approaches focusing on credibility propagation Since multiple social applications have been developed for different aims and in different contexts, several solutions have been considered to address the issue of credibility assessment in Social Media Three of the main tasks facing this issue and considered in this article concern: (1) the detection of opinion spam in review sites, (2) the detection of fake news and spam in microblogging, and (3) the credibility assessment of online health information Despite the high number of interesting solutions proposed in the literature to tackle the above three tasks, some issues remain unsolved; they mainly concern both the absence of predefined benchmarks and gold standard datasets, and the difficulty of collecting and mining large amount of data, which has not yet received the attention it deserves For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website

Regional variation of Guillain-Barre syndrome

Abstract: Guillain-Barre syndrome is a heterogeneous disorder regarding the clinical presentation, electrophysiological subtype and outcome. Previous single country reports indicate that Guillain-Barre syndrome may differ among regions, but no systematic comparative studies have been conducted. Comparative studies are required to identify factors determining disease susceptibility, variation and prognosis, and to improve diagnostic criteria. The International Guillain-Barre Syndrome Outcome Study is a prospective, observational cohort study including all patients within the diagnostic spectrum, aiming to describe the heterogeneity of Guillain-Barre syndrome worldwide. The current study was based on the first 1000 inclusions with a follow-up of at least 1 year and confirmed the variation in clinical presentation, course and outcome between patients. The full clinical spectrum of Guillain-Barre syndrome was observed in patients from all countries participating in the International Guillain-Barre Syndrome Outcome Study, but the frequency of variants differed between regions. We compared three regions based on geography, income and previous reports of Guillain-Barre syndrome subtypes: 'Europe/Americas', 'Asia' (without Bangladesh), and 'Bangladesh'. We excluded 75 (8%) patients because of alternative diagnoses, protocol violations, or missing data. The predominant clinical variant was sensorimotor in Europe/Americas (n = 387/562, 69%) and Asia (n = 27/63, 43%), and pure motor in Bangladesh (n = 74/107, 69%). Miller Fisher syndrome and Miller Fisher-Guillain-Barre overlap syndrome were more common in Asia (n = 14/63, 22%) than in the other two regions (Europe/Americas: n = 64/562, 11%; Bangladesh: n = 1/107, 1%) (P < 0.001). The predominant electrophysiological subtype was demyelinating in all regions (Europe/Americas: n = 312/573, 55%; Asia: n = 29/65, 45%; Bangladesh: n = 38/94, 40%). The axonal subtype occurred more often in Bangladesh (n = 34/94, 36%) than in Europe/Americas (n = 33/573, 6%) and other Asian countries (n = 4/65, 6%) (P < 0.001). In all regions, patients with the axonal subtype were younger, had fewer sensory deficits, and showed a trend towards poorer recovery compared to patients with the demyelinating subtype. The proportion of patients able to walk unaided after 1 year varied between Asia (n = 31/34, 91%), Europe/Americas (n = 334/404, 83%) and Bangladesh (n = 67/97, 69%) (P = 0.003). A similar variation was seen for mortality, being higher in Bangladesh (n = 19/114, 17%) than in Europe/Americas (n = 23/486, 5%) and Asia (n = 1/45, 2%) (P < 0.001). This study showed that factors related to geography have a major influence on clinical phenotype, disease severity, electrophysiological subtype, and outcome of Guillain-Barre syndrome.

Headache and comorbidity in children and adolescents

Abstract: Headache is one of the most common neurological symptom reported in childhood and adolescence, leading to high levels of school absences and being associated with several comorbid conditions, particularly in neurological, psychiatric and cardiovascular systems. Neurological and psychiatric disorders, that are associated with migraine, are mainly depression, anxiety disorders, epilepsy and sleep disorders, ADHD and Tourette syndrome. It also has been shown an association with atopic disease and cardiovascular disease, especially ischemic stroke and patent foramen ovale (PFO).