Topic Review
Therapeutic Community
Therapeutic community is a participative, group-based approach to long-term mental illness, personality disorders and drug addiction. The approach was usually residential, with the clients and therapists living together, but increasingly residential units have been superseded by day units. It is based on milieu therapy principles, and includes group psychotherapy as well as practical activities. Therapeutic communities have gained some reputation for success in rehabilitation and patient satisfaction in Britain and abroad. In Britain, 'democratic analytic' therapeutic communities have tended to specialise in the treatment of moderate to severe personality disorders and complex emotional and interpersonal problems. The evolution of therapeutic communities in the United States has followed a different path with hierarchically arranged communities (or concept houses) specialising in the treatment of drug and alcohol dependence.
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  • 02 Dec 2022
Topic Review
Illicium verum Hook f. (Star Anise)
Illicium verum Hook f. (star anise) is considered an important species in Traditional Chinese Medicine and is also used in contemporary medicine in East Asian countries. It occurs in natural habitats in southeastern parts of China and Vietnam, and is cultivated in various regions in China. The raw materials—Anisi stellati fructus and Anisi stellati aetheroleum obtained from this species exhibit expectorant and spasmolytic activities. The European Pharmacopoeia (4th edition) indicates that these raw materials have been used in allopathy since 2002. The biological activities of the above-mentioned raw materials are determined by the presence of valuable secondary metabolites such as monoterpenoids, sesquiterpenoids, phenylpropanoids, and flavonoids. Recent pharmacological studies on fruit extracts and the essential oil of this species have confirmed their antibacterial, antifungal, anti-inflammatory, and antioxidant activities and thus their medicinal and cosmetic value.
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  • 28 Jan 2022
Topic Review
Mid-Upper Arm Circumference to Predict Malnutrition
The double burden of malnutrition (under- and overnutrition) is a serious public health issue in childhood. The mid-upper arm circumference (MUAC) is a simple tool for screening nutritional status, but studies of the optimal cutoff to define malnutrition are limited. This study aimed to explore the prediction of malnutrition by MUAC in Sri Lankan schoolchildren. The participants were 538 students (202 boys, 336 girls) aged 5–10 years. Spearman’s rank correlation was calculated for MUAC and both body-mass-index-for-age z-score (BAZ) and height-for-age z-score (HAZ). Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis was conducted to assess the ability of MUAC to correctly classify malnutrition, after stratifying for age and birth weight. MUAC correlated significantly with BAZ (r = 0.84) and HAZ (r = 0.35). The areas under the ROC curve for thinness, overweight, obesity, and stunting were 0.88, 0.97, 0.97, and 0.77, respectively. The optimal MUAC cutoff values for predicting thinness and stunting were 167.5 mm and 162.5 mm, respectively; the optimal cutoffs for predicting overweight and obesity were 190.5 mm and 218.0 mm, respectively. These cutoffs differed after stratification by age group and birth weight. Our results confirm MUAC to be a useful tool for monitoring growth in schoolchildren.
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  • 30 Oct 2020
Topic Review
Spray Drying for Direct Compression
Direct compression is a simple, quick and cost-effective drug manufacturing approaches of tableting.
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  • 25 Feb 2021
Topic Review
Leaky Gut Syndrome
Leaky gut syndrome- is a medical condition characterized by increased intestinal permeability which may cause chronic inflammation and contributes to pathogenesis of wide range of diseases. According to the hypothesis of leaky gut syndrome, increased intestinal permeability enables antigens to cross intestinal barrier and absorb into the bloodstream consequently trigger the immune system and cause systemic reactions. Although LGS is very popular in alternative medicine circles, there is still little evidence to support hypothesis that it is a direct cause of any widespread problems.  
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  • 25 Nov 2020
Topic Review
Organoids and Aging
The biology of aging is focused on the identification of novel pathways that regulate the underlying processes of aging to develop interventions aimed at delaying the onset and progression of chronic diseases to extend lifespan. However, the research on the aging field has been conducted mainly in animal models, yeast, Caenorhabditis elegans, and cell cultures. Thus, it is unclear to what extent this knowledge is transferable to humans since they might not reflect the complexity of aging in people. An organoid culture is an in vitro 3D cell-culture technology that reproduces the physiological and cellular composition of the tissues and/or organs. This technology is being used in the cancer field to predict the response of a patient-derived tumor to a certain drug or treatment serving as patient stratification and drug-guidance approaches. Modeling aging with patient-derived organoids has a tremendous potential as a preclinical model tool to discover new biomarkers of aging, to predict adverse outcomes during aging, and to design personalized approaches for the prevention and treatment of aging-related diseases and geriatric syndromes. This could represent a novel approach to study chronological and/or biological aging, paving the way to personalized interventions targeting the biology of aging.
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  • 19 Oct 2021
Topic Review
Tryptophan Metabolism in Cardiovascular Diseases
Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is one of the major causes of mortality worldwide. Inflammation is the underlying common mechanism involved in CVD. It has been recently related to amino acid metabolism, which acts as a critical regulator of innate and adaptive immune responses. Among different metabolites that have emerged as important regulators of immune and inflammatory responses, tryptophan (Trp) metabolites have been shown to play a pivotal role in CVD.
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  • 13 Oct 2021
Topic Review
Five-Minute Speech Sample for High Expressed Emotion
Expressed Emotion (EE) describes the tone of a caregiver’s response to a patient with a mental disorder, and it is used to predict relapse. The Five-Minute Speech Sample (FMSS) is a 5-min interview with a caregiver that evaluates only two EE dimensions. The FMSS emerged as a valid and reliable tool for measuring EE as a predictor of relapse in patients with schizophrenia and major depressive disorder. Patient age and duration of illness had no significant effect on the results. Future meta-analyses should include more studies to reduce publication bias. EE may be a good predictor of relapse when examined through a fast measurement technique such as the FMSS, which may also be useful to analyze the psychopathological structure of caregivers. 
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  • 18 Jan 2023
Topic Review
Machine Learning in Gastroenterology/Endoscopy
Over time, machine learning (ML), a component of artificial intelligence (AI), has been implemented in a variety of medical specialties, such as radiology, pathology, gastroenterology, neurology, obstetrics and gynecology, ophthalmology, and orthopedics, with the goal of improving the quality of healthcare and medical diagnosis. In clinical gastroenterology practice, due to technological developments, estimates show that AI could have the ability to create a predictive model; for instance, it could develop an ML model that can stratify the risk in patients with upper gastrointestinal bleeding, establish the existence of a specific gastrointestinal disease, define the best treatment, and offer prognosis and prediction of the therapeutic response. In this context, by applying ML or deep learning (DL) (AI using neural networks), clinical management in gastroenterology can begin to focus on more personalized treatment centered on the patient and based on making the best individual decisions, instead of relying mostly on guidelines developed for a specific condition. Moreover, the goal of implementing these AI-based algorithms is to increase the possibility of diagnosing a gastrointestinal disease at early stage or the ability to predict the development of a particular condition in advance. Because both AI and gastroenterology encompass many subdomains, the interaction between them might take on various forms. In recent years, we have witnessed a large explosion of research in attempts to improve various fields of gastroenterology, such as endoscopy, hepatology, inflammatory bowel diseases, and many others, with the aid of ML. We also note that, because of the requirement to diagnose more patients with gastrointestinal cancers at an early stage of the disease, which is associated with curative treatment and better prognosis, many studies were developed to address improvement of the detection of these tumors with the aid of AI. The term ML, introduced for the first time in 1959 by Arthur Samuel from the IBM company, refers to an IT domain whereby a computer system can acquire the ability to “learn” by using data without specific programming and can therefore develop a predictive mathematical algorithm based on input data, using recognition of “features”. The ML “model” is subsequently able to adapt to new situations in which it becomes able to predict and make decisions.
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  • 02 Feb 2021
Topic Review
Hyperpolarized Carbon-13 MRI
MR spectroscopy (MRS) and spectroscopic imaging (MRSI) obtain metabolic information noninvasively from nuclei spins. For in vivo applications, common MR-active nuclei are protons (1H), phosphorus (31P), carbon (13C), sodium (23Na), and xenon (129Xe). The most common are protons due to their high gyromagnetic ratio and natural abundance in the human body. Since most metabolic processes involve carbon, 13C spectroscopy is a valuable method to measure in vivo metabolism noninvasively [1,2,3]. 13C spectra are characterized by a large spectral range (162–185 ppm), narrow line widths, and low sensitivity due to the low gyromagnetic ratio (a quarter as compared to protons) and natural abundance of 1.1% in vivo. However, the sensitivity can be increased with the use of 13C-enriched agents and by hyperpolarization.Hyperpolarized (HP) 13C MRI is a method that magnetizes 13C probes to dramatically increase signal as compared to conventional MRI [3]. Metabolic and functional HP 13C MRI is a promising diagnostic tool for detecting disorders linked to altered metabolism such as cancer, diabetes, and heart diseases [4], increasing sensitivity sufficiently to map metabolic pathways in vivo without the use of ionizing radiation, as in positron emission tomography (PET) imaging. Metabolic imaging using HP 13C compounds has been translated successfully into single-organ examinations in healthy controls and various patient populations.
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  • 22 Apr 2021
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