Alessandro Sanna

Preservative systems containing essential oils in cosmetic products.

The aim of this study was to evaluate the antimicrobial activity of selected essential oils (Laurus nobilis, Eucalyptus globulus and Salvia officinalis), both alone and in combination, in cosmetic preparations characterized by an increasing risk of microbial contamination, i.e. an O/W skin cream, a hydrogel and a non‐alcoholic hydrolyte. Their potential synergistic effect in combination with the usual cosmetic preservatives at low concentrations (up to 200‐fold less than usual) was also investigated.

Zinc Status and Autoimmunity: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Zinc is an essential trace element for living organisms and their biological processes. Zinc plays a key role in more than 300 enzymes and it is involved in cell communication, proliferation, differentiation and survival. Zinc plays also a role in regulating the immune system with implications in pathologies where zinc deficiency and inflammation are observed. In order to examine the experimental evidence reported in the literature regarding zinc levels in the body of patients with autoimmune disorders compared to control individuals, a systematic review and meta-analysis were performed. From 26,095 articles identified by literature search, only 179 of them were considered potentially relevant for our study and then examined. Of the 179 articles, only 62 satisfied the inclusion criteria. Particularly for Fixed Model, Zn concentration in both serum (mean effect = −1.19; confidence interval: −1.26 to −1.11) and plasma (mean effect = −3.97; confidence interval: −4.08 to −3.87) samples of autoimmune disease patients was significantly lower than in controls. The data presented in our work, although very heterogeneous in the manner of collecting and investigating samples, have proved to be extremely consistent in witnessing a deficiency of zinc in serum and plasma of patients compared to controls.

Gold in Stream Sediments from the Sardinia Crystalline Basement (Italy)

From the first half of the 1970s to the early 2000s, more than 33 000 samples of stream sediments have been collected in Sardinia over the course of several mineral prospecting campaigns. The sets of elements determined in each campaign varied, although analyses for most of the ore-related metals were normally performed. On this basis, the distribution of gold was studied because, in the set of metals known in the metallogeny of Sardinia, this metal was the last to prove economically recoverable. For this study, the territory of the whole island was subdivided into 110 districts and 26 sectors. This subdivision takes into account both the overall geological–lithological characteristics of each district and the total number of samples collected inside its limits. The results show that the metamorphic-dominated areas display a number of samples containing more than 20 ppb Au. This number is much higher than that observed in the granitic areas, not only as an absolute value, but also in relative frequency, which is more than twice that in the granitic areas. These high Au values are clearly clustered and related to ore-bearing structures.