Articles: human.
-
Human spaceflight is entering a time of markedly increased activity fueled by collaboration between governmental and private industry entities. This has resulted in successful mission planning for destinations in low Earth orbit, lunar destinations (Artemis program, Gateway station) as well as exploration to Mars. ⋯ This chapter will cover clinically important aspects relevant to lung function in a normally proceeding mission; emergency scenarios such as decompression, fire, etc., will not be covered as these are beyond the scope of this review. To date, participation in commercial spaceflight by those with pre-existing chronic medical conditions is very limited, and hence, close collaboration between practicing pulmonary specialists and aerospace medicine specialists is of critical importance to guarantee safety, proper clinical management, and hence success in these important endeavors.
-
The COVID-19 disease wreaked havoc all over the world causing more than 6 million deaths out of over 519 million confirmed cases. It not only disturbed the human race health-wise but also caused huge economic losses and social disturbances. The utmost urgency to counter pandemic was to develop effective vaccines as well as treatments that could reduce the incidences of infection, hospitalization and deaths. ⋯ The SARS-CoV-2 emerging variants have emphasized the need of booster vaccine doses to enhance protective immunity in vaccinated individuals. Additionally, therapeutic effectiveness of Molnupiravir, Paxlovid and Evusheld are also providing resistance against the spread of COVID-19 disease as well as may be effective against emerging variants. This review highlights the progress in developing COVID-19 vaccines, their protective efficacies, advances being made to design more efficacious vaccines, and presents an overview on advancements in developing potent drugs and monoclonal antibodies for countering COVID-19 and emerging variants of SARS-CoV-2 including the most recently emerged and highly mutated Omicron variant.
-
Curr Opin Crit Care · Oct 2023
ReviewOptimal drug therapy for Staphylococcus aureus bacteraemia in adults.
Staphylococcus aureus is a significant human pathogen, causing a variety of infections, from skin and soft tissue infections to endocarditis, bone and joint infections and deep tissue abscesses. Mortality from S. aureus bacteraemia remains high, without major therapeutic advances in recent decades. ⋯ This review details the different PK/PD targets for drugs used to treat S. aureus bacteraemia and how to apply them in various scenarios. The drug doses that achieve them, and the risks of toxicity are also provided.
-
Across multiple pandemics, global health governance institutions have struggled to secure the compliance of states with international legal and political commitments, ranging from data sharing to observing WHO guidance to sharing vaccines. In response, governments are negotiating a new pandemic treaty and revising the International Health Regulations. Achieving compliance remains challenging, but international relations and international law research in areas outside of health offers insights. ⋯ Drawing on human rights, trade, finance, tobacco, and environmental law, we categorise compliance mechanisms as police patrol, fire alarm, or community organiser models. We show that, to date, current and proposed global health law incorporates only a few of the mechanisms that have shown to be effective in other areas. We offer six specific, politically feasible mechanisms for new international agreements that, together, could create compliance pressures to shift state behaviour.
-
Review
Research progress of time-lapse imaging technology and embryonic development potential: A review.
Cultivation and selection of high-quality human embryos are critical for the success of in vitro fertilization-embryo transfer. Time-lapse imaging technology (TLI) provides a stable culture environment for embryos, which can continuously observe and record the development process of early embryos, so that doctors can record embryo development time parameters more accurately. In this study, we review the current observation and research on the main embryo dynamics parameters in TLI and discusses their significance and development for embryo development potential. ⋯ TLI provides technical support of embryo dynamic parameters, which may become the quantitative indicators for superior embryos and pregnancy prediction as well. Existing studies have shown that certain kinetic parameters provided by TLI culture can predict embryo implantation, but no parameter has been confirmed as the absolute correlation biological indicators yet. In this review we believe that further research is needed to verify these preliminary and sometimes contradictory results, and explore the predictive significance of various embryo kinetic parameters relying on TLI technology for embryo development potential.