ROMA (ITALPRESS) – With the arrival of autumn, respiratory disorders and infections affecting mainly nose, throat and bronchi. Cold, flu, pharyngitis, bronchitis and in some cases pneumonia are typical health problems of the cold months: there are also infections such as Covid-19 and those caused by respiratory viruses, particularly widespread in closed and crowded places. During the bad season it is easier to get sick, because you spend more time in closed environments, often not ventilated, and this makes the transmission of microorganisms easier through respiratory drips and aerosols: even cold and dry air can help to make less efficient the defenses of the respiratory tract; the nose and mucous membranes represent an important barrier against infectious agents. When these surfaces dry and are subjected to continuous temperature changes, their protection function may be less effective.
“To avoid getting sick, we naturally need some common sense: to try to avoid sudden cold, major temperature changes, not to turn all day with wet feet if it rains; it is also important to prevent viral infections, which represent the most important risk factor for reactivations for example respiratory diseases, chronic bronchiti and what else. During the Covid-19 we washed hands twenty times a day, now we do not do it anymore: the hands are one of the most important factors in the transmission of possible viral agents; personal hygiene is important, but also change the air in closed environments. Dry air can certainly damage the respiratory tract: it must be humidified in the right way. In every house it must not be too hot or too cold: a pleasant temperature is fine, too dry air does not”. Stefano Centanni, an ordinary professor of Pneumology at the University of Milan, interviewed for Top Medicine, TV format of the news agency Italpress.
As for the vaccine, he explains, “this year the Ministry of Health is carrying out a project called Life Programme: it will go on television and on the main media. The vaccine is changed every year according to expectations: this year it becomes trivalent, no more quadrivalent, because one of the strains B has since 2020 that is no longer intercepted on a part of the world; at this moment it no longer represents a problem, so it will be removed. You try to vaccinate for the most important viruses: this year the most significant, according to the data that comes from the southern hemisphere, is a K variant of the H3N2; it is from there that the influence begins. There are also new guidelines on those who have to vaccinate themselves: for example, from 65 to 60 years, then of course there are children from 6 months to 6 years, health care staff or in any case staff in close contact with a large amount of public, pregnant women and all patients with chronic pathologies such as Bpco, diabetes, kidney failure and heart failure.”.
In the season that will come, he adds, “there are possible quite important symptoms, especially for this variant we talked about before, and consequently an important influence. We have great hopes in this trivalent vaccine, which does not disperse immunogenic power: the advice is always to vaccinate, today there are data that tell us how investing on the vaccine is saved in recovery; every year it is sick of influence about one billion people, still today mortality varies between 300 thousand and 500 thousand cases a year.”.
In the Life Programme, launched by the Ministry of Health, “very many scientific personalities were involved: pediatricians, pneumologists, cardiologists, infectious people, nephrologists, geriaters, in short, all those who deal with patients who may have problems with influenza infection. There is still no optimal coverage: even regions like Lombardy are all far away, there are territories where it is really difficult to pass this concept.”.
Centanni concludes with a reflection on the correct management of movement and physical activity: “It is necessary to be a bit careful about running in very polluted environments, as frequently happens in the big cities: running the ventilation increases due to the effort, but it is also true that by doing it in the parks the exhausts of the machines stopped at the traffic light are not breathed. In the management of certain chronic diseases the movement is absolutely important, because it is very useful: the patient has to do physical activity, obviously avoiding making efforts that then put it in disease”.
-Photos taken from video Top medicine
(ITALPRESS).
