Is there NO treatment for severe sepsis?

Sepsis is a systemic inflammatory response syndrome in the presence of suspected or proven infection, and it may progress to or encompass organ failure (severe sepsis) and hypotension (septic shock). Clinicians possess an arsenal of supportive measures to combat severe sepsis and septic shock, and some success, albeit controversial, has been achieved by using low doses of corticosteroids or recombinant human activated protein C. However, a truly effective mediator-directed specific treatment has not been developed yet. Treatment with low doses of corticosteroids or with recombinant human activated protein C remains controversial and its success very limited. Attempts to treat shock by blocking LPS, TNF or IL-1 were unsuccessful, as were attempts to use interferon-gamma or granulocyte colony stimulating factor. Inhibiting nitric oxide synthases held promise but met with considerable difficulties. Scavenging excess nitric oxide or targeting molecules downstream of inducible nitric oxide synthase, such as soluble guanylate cyclase or potassium channels, might offer other alternatives

Scientific publication productivity of Libyan medical schools: a bibliometric study of papers listed in PubMed, 1988-2007

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The Libyan doctors' brain drain: an exploratory study

Background: Medical emigration from developing to developed countries is a well established phenomenon of substantial importance. Though Libya is classified as an upper-middle income country, it has been affected by this trend. This study was undertaken to identify some of the possible reasons behind the emigration of Libyan doctors and factors that might motivate them to return. Findings: Seventy-four completed questionnaires were analysed. Median age of the respondents was 43 years (33-60) and median duration of stay outside Libya was 15 years (6-29). Most of the participants were resident in Europe (66%). The desire to further their education and research was the main reason given by 88% of the respondents for leaving Libya, while 50% of them gave that as the main reason for staying abroad. One-third of the respondents (31%) cited economic factors as the main reason for not returning. None of the respondents ruled out returning to Libya, and about half of them stated that they definitely or probably will return to Libya. 58% ranked reform of the Libyan health system as the most important reason that could induce them to return to Libya. Conclusion: The study shows that reforming the health care system in Libya might induce some of the physicians who moved abroad mainly for educational and economic reasons to return to Libya to practice medicine

Why are journals from less-developed countries constrained to low impact factors?

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Editorial: Why should you choose to publish in the Libyan Journal of Medicine?

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Deficient editorial practices, perceived quality, and expedient scholarly publishing in a developing nation [version 3; peer review: 2 approved]

Background There is increasing concern about the quality, integrity, and accessibility to research published in the developing world. This study explores the editorial practices and editors’ perspectives to gain insight into the standard of scholarly publishing in Libya. Methods Between 21st January and 12th February, 2022, the editors-in-chief (EC) of Libyan academic journals were invited to complete a questionnaire on editorial practices, degree of satisfaction with submitted and published manuscripts, review processes, and journal performance, as well as challenges facing the journals. Journal websites were examined for quality, and indexation coverage and citations were assessed. We examined the number of citations in Google Scholar for all 2019 articles published in each journal. Descriptive statistics were used to quantitatively summarize the data and thematic analysis was used for the narrative text. Results 48 EC completed the questionnaire. The EC was affiliated with the institution that owns the journal in 92% of cases. Most EC (83%) were satisfied with the peer-review quality, 69% believed that most of their published papers add new ideas or findings, and 96% were satisfied with their journal’s performance. However, despite the high degree of satisfaction, only one journal was indexed in Web of Science or Scopus and only 17% of the journals were indexed in Google Scholar. A qualitative assessment of journal websites revealed shortcomings in publishing practices in a large proportion of the journals. Conclusions The discordance between the satisfaction of the journal editors and the journal quality indicators points to a break in the quality system of Libyan academic publishing. Similar expedient publishing practices might exist in other countries as well. A comprehensive action plan led by academic institutions to enforce high standards for scholarly publishing is needed to advance research and high-quality scholarly publications in developing countries

The Arab world's contribution to solid waste literature: a bibliometric analysis

BACKGROUND: Environmental and health-related effects of solid waste material are considered worldwide problems. The aim of this study was to assess the volume and impact of Arab scientific output published in journals indexed in the Science Citation Index (SCI) on solid waste. METHODS: We included all the documents within the SCI whose topic was solid waste from all previous years up to 31 December 2012. In this bibliometric analysis we sought to evaluate research that originated from Arab countries in the field of solid waste, as well as its relative growth rate, collaborative measures, productivity at the institutional level, and the most prolific journals. RESULTS: A total of 382 (2.35 % of the overall global research output in the field of solid waste) documents were retrieved from the Arab countries. The annual number of documents published in the past three decades (1982–2012) indicated that research productivity demonstrated a noticeable rise during the last decade. The highest number of articles associated with solid waste was that of Egypt (22.8 %), followed by Tunisia (19.6), and Jordan (13.4 %). the total number of citations over the analysed years at the date of data collection was 4,097, with an average of 10.7 citations per document. The h-index of the citing articles was 31. Environmental science was the most researched topic, represented by 175 (45.8 %) articles. Waste Management was the top active journal. The study recognized 139 (36.4 %) documents from collaborations with 25 non-Arab countries. Arab authors mainly collaborated with countries in Europe (22.5 %), especially France, followed by countries in the Americas (9.4 %), especially the USA. The most productive institution was the American University of Beirut, Lebanon, with 6.3 % of total publications. CONCLUSIONS: Despite the expected increase in solid waste production from Arab world, research activity about solid waste is still low. Governments must invest more in solid waste research to avoid future unexpected problems. Finally, since solid waste is a multidisciplinary science, research teams in engineering, health, toxicology, environment, geology and others must be formulated to produce research in solid waste from different scientific aspects