Exploring The Motives Of Religious Travel By Applying The Ahp Method – The Case Study Of Monastery Vujan (Serbia)

Religious tourism is considered as the oldest form of people’s travel. Thousands of years ago people travelled miles led by religious motives. Even though pilgrimage is older than most of the other tourism forms, research on the major motives for religious travel still occupies scientific attention. Vujan Monastery represents one of the main riddles among religious tourism researchers in Serbia. After the mysterious healing of Serbian Patriarch Pavle in 1946 who suffered from tuberculosis, this monastery became one of the most famous sacred places for orthodox Christians. The principle aim of this paper is to propose a new way for exploring and ranking the religious motivation using the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) approach. In addition, the study proposes a set of motives – both religious and secular, which can be applied for exploring the motivations for visiting any sacred site. The method was applied to discover the main motives which drive people to visit Vujan Monastery, get their rankings, as well as their preferences between different types of secular and religious motives. The results indicated a strong preference for religious motives compared to secular motives of visit of this sacred site. On balance, the research provides us with a complete ranking structure, encompassing all analyzed motives of visit which show us a clear picture of the main motivation for visits to Vujan monastery

Metabolism of Direct-acting Antiviral Agents (DAAs) in Hepatitis C Therapy: A Review of the Literature

Background: Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is still one of the leading causes of chronic liver disease, with chronically infected making up approximately 1% of the global population. Of those infected, 70% (55-85%) will develop chronic HCV infection. Chronic HCV infection causes substantial morbidity and mortality, with complications including cirrhosis, end-stage liver disease, hepatocellular carcinoma, and eventually death. Objective: Therapeutic options for chronic HCV infection have evolved dramatically since 2014, with a translation from pegylated interferon and ribavirin (associated with suboptimal cure and high treatment-related toxicity) to oral direct- acting antiviral treatment. There are four classes of direct-acting antivirals which differ by their mechanism of action and therapeutic target. They are all pointed to proteins that form the cytoplasmic viral replication complex. Multiple studies have demonstrated that direct-acting antiviral therapy is extremely well tolerated, highly efficacious, with few side effects. Methods: We performed an indexed MEDLINE search with keywords regarding specific direct-acting antiviral regimes and their pharmacokinetics, drug-drug interactions, and metabolism in specific settings of pregnancy, lactation, liver cirrhosis, liver transplantation and HCC risk, kidney failure and kidney transplantation. Results: We present a comprehensive overview of specific direct-acting antiviral metabolism and drug-drug interaction issues in different settings. Conclusion: Despite its complex pharmacokinetics and the possibility of drug-drug interactions, direct-acting antivirals are highly efficacious in providing viral clearance, which is an obvious advantage compared to possible interactions or side effects. They should be administered cautiously in patients with other comorbidities, and with tight control of immunosuppressive therapy