Sustained Release Intraocular Drug Delivery Devices for Treatment of Uveitis

Corticosteroids have been the mainstay of uveitis therapy. When intraocular inflammation is unresponsive to steroids, or steroid related side effects become a concern, steroid-sparing medications may be administered which can be classified into immunosuppressive and immunomodulatory agents. Uveitis treatment can be delivered systemically, topically, periocularly or intraocularly. All of the above mentioned medications can entail significant systemic side effects, particularly if administered for prolonged durations, which may become treatment-limiting. Some medications, particularly hydrophobic compounds, may poorly cross the blood–retinal barrier. Topical medications, which have the least side effects, do not penetrate well into the posterior segment and are unsuitable for posterior uveitis which is often sight-threatening. Intraocular or periocular injections can deliver relatively high doses of drug to the eye with few or no systemic side effects. However, such injections are associated with significant complications and must often be repeated at regular intervals. Compliance with any form of regular medication can be a problem, particularly if its administration is associated with discomfort or if side effects are unpleasant. To overcome the above-mentioned limitations, an increasing number of sustained-release drug delivery devices using different mechanisms and containing a variety of agents have been developed to treat uveitis. This review discusses various current and future sustained-release ophthalmic drug delivery systems for treatment of uveitis

LETTY M. RUSSELL: INSIGHTS AND CHALLENGES OF CHRISTIAN FEMINISM

This study offers a critical assessment of Letty Mandeville Russell’s contributions to feminist theology with a view to gleaning wisdom for Muslim women who also wrestle with the issue of justice for women. As a liberation theologian, Russell’s definition and construction of feminist theology is based on two elements: commitment to Christianity and strong advocacy of feminism. Russell believes that in human communities, marginalized people, particularly women, are kept down and disempowered in society, history, and the church. Russell recognizes tradition as the key challenge for feminists and she struggles with “all oppressive expressions of Christian tradition.” She notes the androcentric and sexist elements of the Bible, but she refuses to leave the church. Rather, her attempt is to proclaim the “prophetic- messianic” message of the gospel while advocating a critical approach to the biblical text. Thus this thesis will explore the question: Is it possible to reconstruct a theology in a systematic way that is faithful to religious convictions while advocating feminism. In addition to Russell’s books and articles, which form the primary sources for this study, two other Christian feminists (Fiorenza and Harder) will be drawn into the discussion in order to further illuminate the various building blocks that women use to link faith and feminism. Chapter one provides a background for the feminist movement and introduces feminist theology, in order to position Russell within the wide spectrum of feminist theologians who attempt to reconcile their Christian faith and their convictions and vision for women. Chapter two looks Russell’s claim that she is both Christian and feminist. Russell’s definition of feminism, faith, and their inter-relationship will be illuminated as a key to her identity as a feminist theologian. The chapter shows not only how Russell understands these two commitments, often understood as contradictory, but also shows how Russell’s roots in liberation theology have aided her in building a bridge between faith and feminism. Chapter three deals with the methodology that Russell uses to build a bridge between faith and feminism. She proposes a process of action-reflection in which women gain a new understanding of faith and add new perspectives to Christian theology. Chapter four analyzes Russell’s contributions in dealing creatively and faithfully with tradition while being both a Christian and a feminist. She proposes a paradigm shift for the community that does theology; a shift from a paradigm of domination to a paradigm of partnership. She believes that through this shift, all marginalized people, including women, can find their own voices and thus be included in the promises of God to his people. The concluding chapter, chapter five, offers a grandstand view of all of the building blocks that Russell uses to construct a bridge between faith and feminism, thus making apparent how it is possible to advocate feminism and also be committed to Christianity. At the same time, this chapter will also consider whether the same building blocks can be used to build the same kind of bridge for Muslim women

Efficient Computational Design of a Scaffold for Cartilage Cell Regeneration

Due to the sensitivity of mammalian cell cultures, understanding the influence of operating conditions during a tissue generation procedure is crucial. In this regard, a detailed study of scaffold based cell culture under a perfusion flow is presented with the aid of mathematical modelling and computational fluid dynamics (CFD). With respect to the complexity of the case study, this work focuses solely on the effect of nutrient and metabolite concentrations, and the possible influence of fluid-induced shear stress on a targeted cell (cartilage) culture. The simulation set up gives the possibility of predicting the cell culture behavior under various operating conditions and scaffold designs. Thereby, the exploitation of the predictive simulation into a newly developed stochastic routine provides the opportunity of exploring improved scaffold geometry designs. This approach was applied on a common type of fibrous structure in order to increase the process efficiencies compared with the regular used formats. The suggested topology supplies a larger effective surface for cell attachment compared to the reference design while the level of shear stress is kept at the positive range of effect. Moreover, significant improvement of mass transfer is predicted for the suggested topology

Living with Multiple Sclerosis: A Phenomenological Study of Worries, Concern and Psychological Problems in Iranian Patients with MS

Multiple sclerosis (MS), as a progressive and degenerative illness, has an impact on different aspects of individual lives and may lead to difficulties, concerns, and worries in patients. The aim of the present study was to investigate concerns, worries and problems in patients with MS. We used a descriptive phenomenological qualitative approach. Participants were volunteers purposively selected based on their availability. We carried out deep interviews with 15 MS patients and analyzed the detailed information obtained from these interviews by using Colaizzi’s method. We extracted six essential themes and thirty-four sub-themes associated with MS from the content of the interviews. The main themes were labelled “Confronting existential concerns,” “Crisis of facing up with the illness,” “Suffering from the illness,” “Relationship,” “Confrontation with spirituality and religion,” “Searching for tranquility.” Results of the present study also reiterated the following: Patients with MS seem to lose meaning of life and this together with problems in dealing with existential concerns, may lead to the “disintegration of self,” hence resulting in considerable psychological disturbance and distress. It is concluded that the illness evokes psychological injury such as existential anxiety, relationship disturbance and hopelessness, and these psychological injuries can lead to relapsing of MS

WordCommentsAnalyzer: A windows software tool for qualitative research [version 2; referees: 2 approved]

There is a lack of free software that provides a professional and smooth experience in text editing and markup for qualitative data analysis. Word processing software like Microsoft Word provides a good editing experience, allowing the researcher to effortlessly add comments to text portions. However, organizing the keywords and categories in the comments can become a more difficult task when the amount of data increases. We present WordCommentsAnalyzer, a software tool that is written in C# using .NET Framework and OpenXml, which helps a qualitative researcher to organize codes when using Microsoft Word as the primary text markup software. WordCommentsAnalyzer provides an effective user interface to count codes, to organize codes in a code hierarchy, and to see various data extracts belonging to each code. It also offers basic visualization tools. We illustrate how to use this software by conducting a preliminary content analysis on Tweets with the #successfulaging hashtag. We also demonstrate that the software has satisfactory performance on a large dataset of Iranian journals abstracts. We hope this open-source software will facilitate qualitative data analysis by researchers who are interested in using Word for this purpose

letter to editor

letter to edito

Journal Club is a Turning Point of Clinical Knowledge and Therapeutic Experience: Presenting a model

Introduction: Today, is the era of knowledge, data, and different sciences relying on knowledge and research have continued their growth. This way, research and the method of research reading and application in clinical setting have been particular importance. This study endeavored to provide a useful and interactive way to hold meetings in addition to reviewing studies related to the Journal Club focusing on science dealing with the patient's bedside such as medical sciences and psychology. Methods: In this narrative review study the keyword journal club in conjunction with history, presentation, psychology, clinical psychology, and clinical research have been searched in Google scholar, Pubmed, SID, Ensani, Irandoc, Civilica, Magiran, Noormagz data bases in the years 2000-2019. Results: The preliminary search resulted in 284 articles. After removing repetitive articles, we reached 143 articles and after reading title and abstract and considering the including and excluding criteria, 29 articles were included in the study. The results were obtained in three main themes which are necessity, goals, and presentation. Goals as the major theme included five subthemes and presentation theme included two subthemes. Conclusion: According to the results of the reviewed studies for holding journal club, which could be the turning point of knowledge and experience, principles and rules need to be followed. According to these principles this study presented a five-step model including Preliminary, Exploration, Validation, Selection, Presentation and Supplementary steps for journal club meetings

Synthesis of Hyaluronic acid-Tyramine Microgels for Sustained Protein Release

Microgels are hydrophilic polymer matrix with high water content suitable for encapsulation and delivery of biomolecules. In this study, hyaluronic acid (HA) microgels were synthesized using a water in oil emulsion method. First, hyaluronic acid was modified with tyramine, and then the microemulsion was produced by homogenizing the polymer solution in isooctane as an oil phase. HA microdroplets were crosslinked via enzymatic method by addition of horseradish peroxidase (enzyme) and hydrogen peroxide, and stable microgels were produced in a mild crosslinking reaction. According to the results, larger microgels were achieved by increasing the initial polymer concentration. Two sample proteins, Bovine serum albumin (BSA) and lysozyme, were incorporated in the polymer network to investigate the encapsulation efficiency of the microgels. The results demonstrated that the proposed method has a high efficiency for protein encapsulation (> 70%). The release profiles showed that lysozyme, as a cationic protein, was released in a sustained manner over a period of two weeks. However, BSA, as a negatively charged protein, showed a faster release rate. The simple method of microgel fabrication, besides the sustained release of the encapsulated proteins, makes the HA microgels a promising vehicle for delivery of cationic proteins