AIM To critically evaluate the reporting quality of a random sample of clinical trials published in Endodontics against the PRIRATE 2020 checklist and to analyse the association between the quality of reported trials and a variety of parameters. METHODOLOGY Fifty randomized clinical trials relating to Endodontics were randomly selected from the PubMed database from 2015 to 2019 and evaluated by two independent reviewers. For each trial, a score of '1' was awarded when it fully reported each item in the PRIRATE guidelines whereas a score of '0' was awarded when an item was not reported; when the item was reported inadequately a score of '0.5' was awarded. For the items that were not relevant to the trial, 'Not Applicable (NA)' was given. Based on the interquartile range of the overall scores received, trials were categorized into 'Low' (0-58.4%), 'Moderate' (58.5-72.8%) and 'High' (72.9-100%) quality. The associations between characteristics and quality of clinical trials were investigated. Descriptive statistics, frequency analysis and percentage analyses were used to describe the data. To determine the significance of categorical data, the chi-square test was used. The probability value 0.05 was considered as the level of significance. RESULTS Based on the overall scores, 13 (26%), 25(50%) and 12 (24%) of the reports of clinical trials were categorized as 'High', 'Moderate' and 'Low' quality, respectively. Three items (1b, 6d, 11e) were adequately reported in all manuscripts whilst two items (5k, 5m) were scored 'NA' in all the reports. The reports published from Europe had a significantly greater percentage of 'High'-quality scores, compared to Asia, Middle East, North America and South America (P = 0.0002). The 'High'-quality reports were published significantly more often in impact factor journals (P = 0.045). Reports of clinical trials published in journals that adhered to the CONSORT guidelines had significantly more 'High' scores compared to those that did not (P = 0.008). Clinical trials with protocols registered a priori had a significantly greater percentage of 'High' scores compared to the trials that were not registered in advance (P = 0.003). No significant difference occurred between the quality of clinical trials and the number of authors, journal (Endodontic specialty vs. Non-Endodontic specialty) or year of publication. CONCLUSIONS Reports of randomized clinical trials published in the speciality of Endodontics had a substantial number of deficiencies. To create high-quality reports of clinical trials, authors should comply with the PRIRATE 2020 guidelines.
ABSTRACT Introduction: There are growing concerns among European health authorities regarding increasing prices for new cancer medicines, prices not necessarily linked to health gain and the implications for the sustainability of their healthcare systems. Areas covered: Narrative discussion principally among payers and their advisers regarding potential approaches to the pricing of new cancer medicines. Expert opinion: A number of potential pricing approaches are discussed including minimum effectiveness levels for new cancer medicines, managed entry agreements, multicriteria decision analyses (MCDAs), differential/tiered pricing, fair pricing models, amortization models as well as de-linkage models. We are likely to see a growth in alternative pricing deliberations in view of ongoing challenges. These include the considerable number of new oncology medicines in development including new gene therapies, new oncology medicines being launched with uncertainty regarding their value, and continued high prices coupled with the extent of confidential discounts for reimbursement. However, balanced against the need for new cancer medicines. This will lead to greater scrutiny over the prices of patent oncology medicines as more standard medicines lose their patent, calls for greater transparency as well as new models including amortization models. We will be monitoring these developments.
The effect of conventional anti-platelet agents is limited in secondary stroke prevention, and their effects are blunted under high shear stress in the presence of increased levels of circulating von Willebrand factor (VWF). VWF is critically involved in thrombus formation at sites of stenotic extracranial/intracranial arteries. A third generation anti-VWF aptamer (BT200) has been generated which could be useful for secondary stroke prevention. To characterize the effects of BT200 in blood of patients with large artery atherosclerosis stroke (LAA). Blood samples were obtained from 33 patients with acute stroke or transient ischemic attack to measure inhibition of VWF activity and VWF-dependent platelet function. Patients who received clopidogrel or dual antiplatelet therapy did not differ in VWF dependent platelet function tests from aspirin treated patients. Of 18 patients receiving clopidogrel with or without aspirin, only 3 had a prolonged collagen adenosine diphosphate closure time, and none of the patients had ristocetin induced aggregation in the target range. BT200 concentration-dependently reduced median VWF activity from 178 to < 3%, ristocetin induced platelet aggregation from 40U to < 10U and prolonged collagen adenosine diphosphate closure times from 93 s to > 300 s. Baseline VWF activity correlated (r = 0.86, p < 0.001) with concentrations needed to reduce VWF activity to < 20% of normal, indicating that BT200 acts in a target concentration-dependent manner. Together with a long half-life supporting once weekly administration, the safety and tolerability observed in an ongoing phase I trial, and the existence of a reversal agent, BT200 is an interesting drug candidate.
Fagus sylvatica is widely distributed across Europe thanks to its high adaptability in a wide variety of soils and climate. Microbial communities are essential for maintaining forest soil quality a...
In Bosnia and Herzegovina, there is a large number of non-sanitary landfills and landfills where pharmaceutical waste from households is being disposed, as well as the medical waste from different health institutions. Expired pharmaceuticals are mostly being disposed there, because there is very little attention paid on waste sorting at the place of its origin. Now days, there are thousands of different medicine, and mainly, along with the other household waste, expired antibiotics are disposed of too. Degradation of expired pharmaceuticals in the environment very often leads to formation of products with completely different properties in regards to the original compound, but also it is not uncommon for those newly formed products to be more toxic than the original ones. This paper analyses the impact of rainwater infiltration on the body of the landfill where expired pharmaceuticals are being disposed of, as well as other medical waste at municipal landfills in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Field studies on the size of the rainwater infiltration as a function of different parameters have been conducted, and also degradation analysis of different expired drugs that are being disposed of in landfills has been performed.
Water, whether in a concrete or abstract sense, has an irreplaceable role in every culture and literary tradition in Bosnia and Herzegovina – from the elementary essential-biological to the ambient and psychological in the representations of space and people. This paper will, through concrete examples, examine the role of water topos in works of Bosnian literature precisely through these segments. The theoretical part indicates what the water topos represents, and the interpretive part sees water as a motif and symbol in the structure of the literary text and emphasizes the inscription of factional geographical toponyms/hydronyms, as well as fictitious abstract (a) topos in the poetic identities of the text (and opus in its entirety). In all this, we try to prove the hypothesis that water is an identifying determinant of a certain space and time, and in the cognitive-identity sense an important marker of cultures, social communities and individuals.
Introduction/Objectives: Health authorities are facing increasing challenges to the sustainability of their healthcare systems because of the growing expenditures on medicines, including new, high-priced oncology medicines, and changes in disease prevalence in their ageing populations. Medicine prices in European countries are greatly affected by the ability to negotiate reasonable prices. Concerns have been expressed that prices of patented medicines do not fall sufficiently after the introduction of lower-cost generic oncology medicines. The objective of this study was to examine the associations over time in selected European countries between the prices of oral oncology medicines, population size, and gross domestic product (GDP) before and after the introduction of generic versions. Evidence of periodic reassessments of the price, value, and place in treatment of these medicines was also looked for. The goal of this review was to stimulate debate about possible improvements in approaches to reimbursement negotiations. Methodology: Analysis was performed of reimbursed prices of three oral oncology medicines (imatinib, erlotinib and fludarabine) between 2013 and 2017 across Europe. Correlations were explored between GDP, population size, and prices. Findings were compared with previous research regarding prices of generic oral oncology medicines. Results: The prices of imatinib, erlotinib and fludarabine varied among European countries, and there was limited price erosion over time in the absence of generics. There appeared to be no correlation between population size and price, but higher prices of on-patent oral cancer medicines were seen among countries with higher GDP per capita. Conclusion: Limited price erosion for patented medicines contributed to increases in oncology medicine budgets across the region. There was also a concerning lack of evidence re-assessments of the price, value, and place in treatment of patented oncology medicines following the loss of patent protection of standard medicines. The use of such proactive re-assessments in negotiating tactics might positively impact global expenditures for oncology medicines.
In the teaching process, the relationship between students and university teachers is an important determinant of the quality learning and teaching process. The concepts of didactic theories provide a different approach to the didactic - methodical determination of teaching, and the position of students in the scientific - teaching process in relation to the concept of the old school and the traditional pedagogical paradigm of teaching. The student is observed and experienced as a collaborator, learning partner, authoritarian teaching styles are abandoned, democratically oriented communication and interaction are developed, with mutual respect, tolerance and respect for all participants in the teaching process. The analytical - descriptive method, comparative analysis and content analysis were used. The relationship and position of students and university teachers in the teaching process through the prism of didactic theories advocated by Christina Moller and Felix von Cube are presented. The issues of selectivity, cooperation and competitiveness as a starting point for defining the position of students in teaching, purposes and goals of learning, based on the modern pedagogical paradigmatic orientation of the “learning society”, and the analysis of the position and position of students and university teachers through the prism of cyber-information didactic theories and curriculum theories.
The proper application of retrosynthesis to identify possible transformations for a given target compound requires a lot of chemistry knowledge and experience. However, because the complexity of this technique scales together with the complexity of the target, efficient application on compounds with intricate molecular structures becomes almost impossible for human chemists. The idea of using computers in such situations has existed for a long time, but the accuracy was not sufficient for practical applications. Nevertheless, with the steady improvement of machine learning and artificial intelligence in recent years, computer-assisted retrosynthesis has been gaining research attention again. Because of the overall lack of chemical reaction data, the main challenge for the recent retrosynthesis methods is low exploration ability during the analysis of target and intermediate compounds. The main goal of this research is to develop a novel, template-free approach to address this issue. Only individual molecular substructures of the target are used to determine potential disconnection sites, without relying on additional information such as chemical reaction class. The model for the identification of potential disconnection sites is trained on novel molecular substructure fingerprint representations. For each of the disconnections suggested using the model, a simple structural similarity-based reactant retrieval and scoring method is applied, and the suggestions are completed. This method achieves 47.2% top-1 accuracy for the single-step retrosynthesis task on the processed United States Patent Office dataset. Furthermore, if the predicted reaction class is used to narrow down the reactant candidate search space, the performance is improved to 61.4% top-1 accuracy.
The research dealt with the identification of significant differences in the basic dimensions of personality according to the five-factor model between two groups of respondents: heroin addicts and the control group of respondents, non-consumers of psychoactive substances. Also, we wanted to determine whether the respondents - heroin addicts in relation to the non-clinical group differ significantly in personality traits given the completeness of the family environment in which they grew up, and the propensity of parents to alcoholism and violent behavior. The study included a sample of 297 subjects, of which 155 were heroin users, and 142 were non-clinical control group subjects, students of different study profiles of the University of Tuzla. The clinical and non-clinical samples were uniform in terms of characteristics important for the research. In order to test the research hypotheses, in addition to the insight into the descriptive parameters, a one-way analysis of variance was used. The results show that heroin users achieve significantly higher results in the dimensions of Agreeableness (F = 21.51; p = 0.00), Conscientiousness (F = 13.89; p = 0.00) and Neuroticism (F = 13.23; p = 0.00), while the clinical and non-clinical groups do not differ significantly in the dimensions of Openness and Extraversion. In the group of heroin consumers, respondents coming from incomplete families achieve significantly lower results on the Conscientiousness dimension (F = 4.20; p = 0.04), the tendency to consume parental alcohol proved to be a significant factor for the Neuroticism dimension (F = 4.39; p = 0, 04) and Openness (F = 15.41; p = 0.00), while parental propensity to violent behavior proved to be a significant factor for the Neuroticism dimension (F = 4.49; p = 0.04) and Openness (F = 15.41; p = 0.00). ). When it comes to the non-clinical control group, family completeness and characteristics of the family environment (parents ‘tendency to consume alcohol and parents’ tendency to violent behavior) did not prove to be significant factors for differences in personality traits.
Anti-aging cosmetics are often sought after in order to slow down the aging process. Free radicals are one of the main causes of skin aging, and therefore antioxidants are used in anti-aging cosmetics. The aim of this study was to investigate which method is the most suitable for determining the antioxidant capacity of these products. Having samples extracted, the antioxidant capacity of the extracts obtained was determined by the following spectrophotometric methods: DPPH, Folin-Ciocalteu, FRAP, the ABTS method and the ferroion chelation method with ferrosine. The antioxidant capacity of the samples varied depending on the extract type and the method used. DPPH and ferroion chelation measurements with ferrosine were carried out in the part of the spectrum where plant pigments absorb. These pigments are often found in anti-aging products affecting these methods measurement results. The Folin-Ciocalteu method is suitable for researching the antioxidant capacity of hydrophilic extracts, but not lipophilic ones, where turbidity and the formation of a gelled ring occur. The FRAP method revealed similar results for all the samples and proved to be less sensitive than the others. The ABTS method for both types of extracts has proven to be the most suitable and sensitive method for determining the antioxidant capacity of anti-aging products.
Uncertainty, unfolding in the most extreme forms in the period of one of the greatest global challenges – a threat to the health and wellbeing of people, caused by the pandemic, is gaining a form difficult to conceive in temporal and conceptual terms. In the perception of students, the young people on the brink of the first employment, the uncertainty primarily reflects in the estimate of possibilities of finding a job and opportunities to construct a professional identity. This paper examines the potential role of personal branding in the improvement of student opportunities to find the desired job, as well as the importance of higher education institutions as strategic partners in the process. This paper, among others, also emphasizes the importance of empowering students towards the recognition of the role of their knowledge and competencies acquired during the studies; the role which does not correspond to banal, oversimplified reduction of the role of education as means to meet the labour market needs.
Generation Z falls into the internet generation because it is the first generation born after the popularisation of the internet. Even though scientists don’t agree on when this generation starts and when it ends, after all, it is believed that the generation Z is made of people that are born in the nineties until today. Their parents belong to the millennial generation that is born in the eighties. Generation Z is the first generation that was raised as a part of the trend of being in the publics' eye, always posting about their lives on social networks. This potentially makes them an egocentric generation and a generation that does not have enough empathy. Although empathy is one of the key characteristics for happiness, generation Z finds happiness in their personal appearance and they care a lot about the opinions of others, that is, they care about the number of likes and the number of followers on social networks. Even though empathy is a key trait of happiness, generation Z finds happiness in physical appearance, and in others' opinion, that is they care about how many likes and how many followers on social networks they have. The purpose of this paper is to examine emotional empathy with the generation that is born in the late nineties, until generations 2006-2007, on a sample of 200 primary and high school students with an assumption that later generations are more empathic and that there is a difference between male and female subjects, that is that females are more empathic. Also, the paper provides case reports that represent the clinical population and not the average representatives of this generation and whose psychological problems may be associated with excessive use of the Internet and social networks. The results of the research indicate that the feeling of insecurity and lack of empathy in this generation is a risk factor for the development of low self-esteem and self-confidence, and ultimately more severe mental disorders, which can be reduced and prevented by a different approach to this generation.
This paper presents the results of a preliminary study, which utilizes a hashtag-based approach and mixed-method procedures to describe the nexus between commemoration practices and visual social media. It mainly focuses on Instagram hashtags for the Day of the Republic of Srpska, a disputed and controversial public holiday celebrated on the 9th of January in the Republic of Srpska, to track how commemoration practices related to national memories are shaped through the process of digital (re)mediation.
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