Abstract The 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl coenzyme A (HMG-CoA) reductase inhibitors (statins) are generally well tolerated as monotherapy. Statins are associated with two important adverse effects, asymptomatic elevation in liver enzymes and myopathy. Myopathy is most likely to occur when statins are administered with other drugs. Statins are substrates of multiple drug transporters (including OAT- -P1B1, BCRP and MDR1) and several cytochrome P450 (CYP) enzymes (including CYP3A4, CYP2C8, CYP2C19, and CYP2C9). Possible adverse effects of statins can occur due to interactions in concomitant use of drugs that substantially inhibit or induce their methabolic pathway. This review summarizes the most important interactions of statins.

Introduction: Therapeutic ultrasound is a physical modality which is constantly expanding range of indications. Analgesic effect of ultrasound is still under discussion. Regardless the extensive application of pulsed ultrasound of low intensity, continuous ultrasound has a better analgesis effect, which is explained by its mechanism of action. Aims: The main research objective of this study was to determine the effect of continuous ultrasound to pain caused by degenerative diseases of the musculoskeletal system in the intensity and duration of ultrasound treatment. Other objectives are entailed determining the correlation between the degree of pain reduction with: location of pain, age, gender and body mass index (BMI). Material and methods: The study included 68 patients with chronic pain localized in the region of the spine or major joints of the extremities, depending on the localization of the degenerative changes. Patients are divided into two groups. The first group was treated with 10 applications of continuous ultrasound with frequency of 1 MHz, intensity 0.4 W/cm2 for 8 minutes, and the other group with 10 applications of ultrasound with frequency of 1 MHz, intensity 0.8 W/cm 2 for 4 minutes. Results and Discussion: Pain intensity was assessed before and after ultrasound therapy performed by subjective visual analogue scale (VAS) for pain, numbered from 0-10, where 0 is the rating for the state of no pain, and 10 grades for severe pain. The average VAS improvement in the first group was 3.97, and 4.74 in second one. The results of F (1.66) = 2.93, p = 0.09 analysis of variance showed no significance difference between the average improvement of two groups. Correlation between the degree of pain reduction showed significance only with BMI, or that higher BMI is associated with a lower degree of pain reduction. The results of this study showed that application of continuous ultrasound in patients with chronic pain, caused by degenerative changes in the musculoskeletal system, led to a significant reduction in pain. Different intensity and duration of ultrasound application showed no significant effect on the degree of pain reduction. Body mass index showed significant negative correlation with the degree of pain reduction, but age, gender and location of pain did not show significant correlation.

Personal health information is regarded by many as being among the most confidential of all types of personal information. Due to violation of the right to privacy the European Court of Human Rights issued large number verdicts against EU countries, for failure to protect citizens' medical records and confidential data that they contain. Many data protection laws and the EU Data Protection Directive require that the data controller must implement appropriate technical and organizational measures to protect personal data. Personal health information is considered a special category of personal data, for which an extra level of protection is required under data protection rules. Taking into account increasing use of automatic processing of medical data by information systems, this paper presents issue of personal health information protection and the situation in this matter in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Objective: To determine the effectiveness of the use of the SIP score and the quality of life impairment in patients with ileal conduit and orthotropic ileal derivations by Hautmann and AbolEnein/Ghoneim. Methods: Prospectively evaluated 146 patients in different age groups. In 66 patients ileal conduit derivation was performed, in 20 patients orthotropic derivation using Hautman technique was recorded and in 20 of them AbolEnein/Ghoneim was used. Prior to examining patients with urinary diversions, 40 patients with minor urological symptoms not requiring any active treatment, were surveyed in order to validate SIP score. Six months after the operation, all patients with urinary diversions filled the SIP score questionnaire. Results: Using Crombach’s Alpha equation the high reliability of SIP questionnaire was proven. Average scale value was 0,93. Using descriptive statistics mean values of all categories and dimensions of the SIP questionnaire of examined patients were determined, calculated according to the questionnaire manual being converted to percentage. Total value of SIP score for the ileal conduit group was 34,76% and in orthotropic derivation 18,52% respectively. For Hautmann procedure total SIP score was 18,35% and for AbolEnein/Ghoneim 18,7%. In the control group total SIP score was 9%. The most influential dimensions on the total score of ileal conduit were physical and psycho-social, while independent dimension did not significantly influent total SIP score. Conclusion: Taking into consideration the lack of questionnaires on quality of life for urinary derivations, SIP score as a general disease influence to the quality of life questionnaire represents a reliable alternative for objectification and quantification of the quality of life upon urinary derivation. According to this instrument, orthotropic derivations provide significantly better quality of life compared to ileal conduit.

The TIGER-3 radar is being developed as an “all digital” radar with 20 integrated digital transceivers, each connected to a separate antenna. Using phased array antenna techniques, radiated power is steered towards a desired direction based on the relative phases within the array elements. This paper proposes an accurate phase measurement method to calibrate the phases of the radio output signals using Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) technology. The method sequentially measures the phase offset between the RF signal generated by each transceiver and a reference signal operated at the same frequency. Accordingly, the transceiver adjusts its phase in order to align to the reference phase. This results in accurately aligned phases of the RF output signals and with the further addition of appropriate phase offsets, digital beamforming (DBF) can be performed steering the beam in a desired direction. The proposed method is implemented on a Virtex-5 VFX70T device. Experimental results show that the calibration accuracy is of 0.153 degrees with 14 MHz operating frequency.

In scientific circles, the reference is the information that is necessary to the reader in identifying and finding used sources. The basic rule when listing the sources used is that references must be accurate, complete and should be consistently applied. On the other hand, quoting implies verbatim written or verbal repetition of parts of the text or words written by others that can be checked in original. Authors of every new scientific article need to explain how their study or research fits with previous one in the same or similar fields. A typical article in the health sciences refers to approximately 20-30 other articles published in peer reviewed journals, cite once or hundreds times. Citations typically appear in two formats: a) as in-text citations where the sources of information are briefly identified in the text; or b) in the reference list at the end of the publication (book chapter, manuscript, article, etc.) that provides full bibliographic information for each source. Group of publishers met in Vancouver in 1978 and decided to prescribe uniform technical propositions for publication. Adopted in the 1979 by the National Library of Medicine in Bethesda, then the International Committee of Medical Journals Editors (ICMJE), whose review in 1982 entered the official application by 300 international biomedical journals. Authors writing articles for publication in biomedical publications used predominantly citation styles: Vancouver style, Harward style, PubMed style, ICMJE, APA, etc. The paper gives examples of all of these styles of citation to the authors in order to facilitate their applications. Also in this paper is given the review about the problem of plagiarism which becomes more common in the writing of scientific and technical articles in biomedicine.