Brief description of my research activities. | See full publication list and reprints here.
The general objective of this research activity is to quantify the relationships between environmental exposures and human health.
Exposure to air pollution represents a serious threat to health worldwide, being responsible for a large portion of the global burden of disease. Health effect of exposure to air pollution has been investigated focusing on different cardiovascular outcomes (e.g. atrial fibrillation, venous thromboembolism) or diabetes for which evidence of the association were lacking or uncertain. I use large datasets and different epidemiological designs, including cohort, time-series, case-crossover, cross-sectional and ecological to infer small statistical effects from large datasets adjusting for confounders either in time or space.
Exposure from water emerging pollutants was investigated within a recent EU project (project Trace) in collaboration with University College of Dublin and the Catalan Institute for Water Research. Water resources may act as potential reservoir of antibiotic resistant genes (ARGs) and risk assessment was lacking. Using numerical simulations and computer intensive methods, we could quantify the risk of ingestion of ARGs through bathing and consumption of fresh vegetables irrigated with contaminated water.
Several other environmental risk factors for human health were investigated in past projects including stereoscopic movie vision and 3D glasses safety, hospital water and surface contamination, biological contamination of fresh vegetables and others.
In recent years, several vector-borne disease outbreaks have been occurring in Europe caused by pathogens that were considered restricted to tropical or sub-tropical areas. The aim of this research activity is to understand the main drivers of outbreak risk of vector borne diseases and is carried out in close collaboration with my colleagues of the Sapienza medical entomology group (B. Caputo and A. della Torre) and epidemic modelers at Edmund Mach and Bruno Kessler Foundations in Trento. Using statistical and numerical methods the outbreak risk of Rome and the Lazio region was quantified for Dengue, Chikungunya, Zika and Yellow Fever. Additionally, outbreak parameters and transmission chains were modelled in the recent outbreak of Chikungunya in Lazio and compared with the previous outbreak in Emilia Romagna. Related small projects investigated other aspects of mosquitoes colonization, including knowledge and attitude of the general population. In a different project, the outbreak of Ebola in one of the region of central Africa was described to infer performance of WHO indicators.
Aim of this research activity is the assessment of the effect of anthropogenic activities (e.g. biological and chemical pollution, hydromorphological alteration) on the ecological status of surface waters as defined by the recent EU legislation (Water Framework Directive). Research activities were funded by different EU-project Streames, Rebecca and Wiser. Several aspects of freshwater ecosystem structure and functioning and their changes due to human induced alterations were covered including the effect of waste-water treatment plants on several biological quality elements of rivers, the effect of nutrient enrichment on lakes and the definition of new quality standards for biological elements of European rivers and lakes.
See also Sapienza Iris catalugue