All papers submitted to our Journal should declare agreement with the following ‘statement of human and animal rights’. No paper lacking it will be considered for publication. Papers describing procedures involving humans or animals must include an explicit and easily identifiable statement pointing out that the procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000 and 2008. If any doubt exists as to whether the research was conducted in accordance with the Helsinki Declaration, the authors must, in primis, explain the rationale for their approach, and then demonstrate that the institutional ethical committee explicitly approved the doubtful aspects of the study. When reporting experiments on animals, authors must indicate that the institutional and national guidelines for the care and use of laboratory animals was followed.