Italy, Greece, Spain, and Portugal have all been strongly affected by the 2008 financial crisis, which has had a negative impact on health. We systematically evaluated the effects of the crisis on lifestyle and socioeconomic inequalities. We conducted a literature search using MEDLINE, Embase, the Cochrane Library, and health economics databases for studies reporting quantitative comparisons before and after (or during) the crisis on the following risk behaviors: alcohol consumption, smoking habit, healthy diet, physical activity, and psychotropic drugs and substance abuse, without setting any age restrictions. We selected 34 original articles published between 2011 and 2020. During/after the crisis, alcohol consumption and substance abuse decreased, while psychotropic drug use increased. We also observed a deterioration in healthy eating behavior, with a reduction in fruit and vegetable consumption. Smoking habit and physical activity showed a more complex, controversial trend. Socioeconomic inequalities were affected by the recession, and the negative effects on unhealthy lifestyle tended to be more pronounced among the disadvantaged. These results suggest the need to implement health policies and interventions aimed at monitoring risk behaviors, with special regard to disadvantaged people, and considering the potential additional impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Background: The growing burden of diabetes mellitus (DM) is posing a threat to global tuberculosis (TB) control. DM triples the risk of developing TB, modifies the presenting features of pulmonary TB, and worsens TB treatment outcomes. We aimed to analyze the prevalence of DM among TB patients and to describe the characteristics and clinical presentation of TB-DM patients in Europe. Methods: We performed a cross-sectional survey on the prevalence of DM among consecutively diagnosed adult TB patients in 11 European TB referral centers located in France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Russia, Slovakia, Spain, and the United Kingdom over the period 2007–2015. We also selected DM-TB cases and TB only controls with a 1:3 ratio to perform a case-control analysis, including patients selected from the countries mentioned above plus Norway and Ukraine. Results: Among 3143 TB enrolled patients, DM prevalence overall was 10.7% and ranged from 4.4% in Greece to 28.5% in the United Kingdom. Patients’ median ages ranged from 36 to 49 years, and all centers had >60% males; the proportion of foreign-born patients varied widely across sites. In the case-control study, DM was independently associated with older age and, among older patients, with being foreign-born. Among patients with pulmonary involvement, cavities on chest imaging were more frequently observed among those with DM. Conclusions: Diabetes mellitus represents a challenge for TB control in Europe, especially in foreign-born and in elderly patients. Specific screening strategies should be evaluated.

The objective of this review is to give an overall view of COVID-19 bivalent vaccines knowledge and to explore their early available real-world effectiveness evidence in the Omicron era. Presently, bivalent vaccines are generally offered to all groups eligible for their next booster, as defined by the national vaccination campaign, with varying policies between countries. The use of bivalent vaccines is supported by immunogenicity studies, which, nevertheless, have led to contradictory conclusions, and are not generally designed to measure clinical impact. In order to critically appraise the available research on real-world effectiveness, a systematic literature search was performed: out of 876 references examined, 14 studies were finally included and extracted. The findings of this review demonstrate modest to moderate additional protection of vaccination with bivalent BA.4-5 or BA.1 mRNA-booster vaccines against COVID-19-associated illness and hospitalization, -if compared with having received a monovalent dose as a booster-, during a period when BA.5 and other Omicron sublineage viruses predominated globally, Considering the complexity of the current immunity situation at the global level, and the high level of heterogeneity both at the study and at the review level, these findings must be taken with caution. Further research on SARS-CoV-2 vaccine effectiveness against emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants is encouraged.

Background: Several studies have shown that antibody responses in people with HIV depend on CD4 count and people with HIV with CD4 counts below 500 may have a weaker response to vaccination. This systematic review aims at evaluating vaccine effectiveness reported by real world studies on HIV...

The objective of this review is to give an overall view of COVID-19 bivalent vaccines knowledge and to explore their early available real world effectiveness evidence in the Omicron era. Presently, bivalent vaccines are generally offered to all groups eligible for their next booster, as defined by the national vaccination campaign, with varying policies between countries. The use of bivalent vaccines is supported by immunogenity studies, which, nevetheless, have led to contradictory conclusions, and are not generally designed to measure clinical impact. In order to critically appraise the available research on real world effectiveness, a systematic literature search was performed: out of 876 references examined, 14 studies were finally included and extracted. The findings of this review demonstrate modest to moderate additional protection of vaccination with bivalent BA.4-5 or BA.1 mRNA-booster vaccines against COVID-19 associated illness and hospitalization, -if compared with having received a monovalent dose as booster-, during a period when BA.5 and other Omicron sublineage viruses predominated globally, Considering the complexity of the current immunity situation at global level, and the high level of heterogeneity both at study and at review level, these findings must be taken with caution. Further research on SARS-CoV-2 vaccine effectiveness against emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants is encouraged.