The Role of Herbal Medicine in the Treatment of Acne Vulgaris: A Systematic Review of Clinical Trials

Over the past few decades, interest in medicinal plants and phytochemicals for the treatment of skin disorders, including acne vulgaris, has progressively increased. Acne vulgaris is a chronic inflammatory disease of the pilosebaceous unit, which mainly occurs in adolescents and young adults. The treatment focuses on the four main factors involved in its pathogenesis: increased sebum production, hyperkeratinization, overgrowth of Cutibacterium acnes, and inflammation. The treatment includes topical retinoids, benzoyl peroxide, antibiotics, and oral isotretinoin. In this regard, the use of herbal medicine as a complementary and alternative medicine is a promising strategy. The main objective of this study was to systematically evaluate the efficacy and safety of medicinal plants and phytochemicals in the treatment of acne vulgaris. Three scientific databases (PubMed, Web of Science, and Scopus) were searched from inception to January 2021. Clinical trials comparing herbal therapies with placebo or other medicines for the treatment of acne vulgaris were included and analyzed. Outcome measures of interest comprised acne lesions (inflammatory and noninflammatory), sebum production, acne severity, and quality of life. The risk of bias in the included randomized controlled trials (RCTs) was assessed using the Cochrane risk-of-bias tool. A total of 34 clinical trials involving 1753 participants met the inclusion criteria for this systematic review. Most trials showed that herbal medicine significantly reduces inflammatory and noninflammatory acne lesions and has a relevant effect on acne severity. Some medicinal plants revealed equal or higher efficacy to standard treatments. No significant difference between groups in sebum production and quality of life was observed and no severe adverse events were reported. This systematic review provides evidence that medicinal plants and phytochemicals are promising treatments for mild to moderate acne vulgaris. However, more quality of evidence and standardized methodologies are needed to support their effectiveness and safety claims.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Normalização em ética e responsabilidade social: desenvolvimentos em Portugal

A Organização Internacional de Normalização (ISO) está a desenvolver a Norma Internacional de Responsabilidade Social (Norma ISO 26000), com publicação prevista para 2008, que constituirá um guia sobre esta matéria, tendo encorajado por outro lado todos os países participantes a desenvolver as suas próprias normas nacionais sobre a mesma temática. Portugal vem participando nestes esforços através da APEE (Associação Portuguesa de Ética Empresarial), na sua qualidade de Organismo de Normalização Sectorial para os domínios da Ética Empresarial e Responsabilidade Social, que lançou as Comissões Técnicas CT 164 Responsabilidade Social e CT 165 Ética Empresarial, no âmbito do Sistema Português de Normalização. A CT 164 tem o mandato de acompanhar e contribuir para os desenvolvimentos da Norma ISO e, ainda mais importante, de elaborar uma Norma Portuguesa de Responsabilidade Social (RS), como resposta ao interesse crescente por parte das empresas e de outras organizações em actuar reconhecidamente em prol da sustentabilidade, e ao repto da própria ISO, que encorajou os diversos países a elaborarem as suas normas nacionais de RS. É de referir que o trabalho em Portugal se tem desenvolvido em articulação com o da também recém-criada CT 165 Ética Empresarial, cujo principal objectivo é o desenvolvimento de uma norma sobre a elaboração e implementação de códigos de ética em organizações. Por outro lado, o Fórum de Ética e Responsabilidade Social é composto por entidades representativas de seis categorias de partes interessadas (stakeholders), definidas pela ISO, ou seja, Empresas, Organizações Laborais, Organizações Não Governamentais, Organizações de Consumidores, Organizações Governamentais e Serviços, Suporte, Investigação e Outros. O Fórum tem a função de Mirror Committee do ISO/TMB/WG SR e, sobretudo, de contribuir activamente para o desenvolvimento dos projectos de Normas Portuguesas de Responsabilidade Social e de Elaboração e Implementação de Códigos de Ética em organizações, em estreita colaboração com a CT 164 e a CT 165

As Jovens e a Contraceção de Emergência: Vivências da sexualidade

Resumo Ser adolescente…jovem faz parte do percurso do ser humano no seu crescimento e desenvolvimento. É dos períodos da vida mais saudáveis e de conquista que se têm ao longo da vida. No entanto, atendendo aos comportamentos de risco, nomeadamente aos que surgem naturalmente fruto desta fase de desenvolvimento, e às novas realidades com que os jovens se defrontam socialmente no seu quotidiano, torna-se pertinente entender este período de vida e as particularidades que nele assume a sexualidade. Com Portugal a ocupar o lugar cimeiro entre os jovens europeus infetados com o VIH/SIDA (Frade et al., 2006; Matos, 2010) e com gravidezes indesejadas, a sexualidade na adolescência é um tema importante na atualidade portuguesa. O presente estudo teve como objetivos: compreender os significados atribuídos pela jovem à vivência da sua sexualidade; compreender os significados atribuídos pela jovem à experiência de utilização de contraceção de emergência. Participaram no estudo vinte e três (23) jovens do sexo feminino, todas utilizadoras do Gabinete de Apoio à Sexualidade Juvenil, de uma Delegação Regional da Zona Centro do Instituto Português da Juventude. Recorreu-se a uma abordagem fenomenológica, tendo-se para o efeito selecionado a entrevista semiestruturada como instrumento de colheita de dados. Para a análise dos dados optou-se pela proposta de Análise Fenomenológica de Max Van Manen (1997). Dessa análise emergiram cinco grandes temas. Este artigo analisa um desses grandes temas: a Contraceção de Emergência como recurso na gravidez indesejada. São apresentadas diferentes subcategorias e subsubcategorias. As jovens manifestam uma forte preocupação com as gravidezes indesejadas, mas o uso inadequado de métodos contracetivos e o recurso a métodos pouco eficazes levam-nas ao uso da Contraceção de Emergência em situações extremas. Está subjacente a toda esta prática, a falta de preocupação com as Infeções Sexualmente Transmissíveis (IST).Abstract Being an adolescent…a youth, is part of the path in a human being’s growth and development. It is a period of life brimming with health, achievement and promise. Nevertheless, due to risk behaviours, including those which occur as a natural part of this stage of development and the new realities adolescents face in their day-to-day social lives, it is worth understanding this period of life as well as the particular part sexuality plays in it. With Portugal in the top position among young Europeans infected with HIV/AIDS (Frade et al., 2006; Matos, 2010) and unwanted pregnancies, adolescent sex is an important issue in Portugal today. The aim of this study was to understand the meanings attributed by adolescents to experience their sexuality and to understand the meanings attributed by adolescents to experience of use of emergency contraception for some young users of the Youth Sexuality Support Office [Gabinete de Apoio à Sexualidade Juvenil] of a Delegation for the Central Region [Delegação Regional da Zona Centro] of the Portuguese Youth Institute [Instituto Português da Juventude] by a phenomenological approach. A semi-structured interview was used to collect the data and twenty-three (23) young women participated in the study. The Max Van Manen (1997) Phenomenological Analysis was selected to analyse the data. From this analysis, five major themes emerged. This article examines one of these topics: Emergency Contraception as a resource in unwanted pregnancies. We present different subcategories and sub-subcategories. The young females showed a strong preoccupation with unwanted pregnancy by the inadequate use of contraception and ineffective methods leading to requiring emergency contraception in extreme situations. An underlying issue to this entire practice is the lack of concern regarding Sexually Transmitted Diseases

Proposta de metodologia para avaliação de software comercial destinado ao projeto de engenharia da construção

A partir da década de noventa do século passado, começaram a surgir no mercado ferramentas de cálculo com o objetivo de agilizar a conceção do projeto de engenharia da construção. Até ao final da década de setenta os computadores existentes eram enormes, apenas entidades de grande poder económico os podiam adquirir. Na década de oitenta surgiu no mercado o PC, Personal Computer, estas pequenas máquinas começaram a ser adquiridas pela generalidade das empresas e em Portugal no final desta década era possível encontrar indivíduos que já possuíam o seu PC. Na década de noventa, a saída de recém-formados das instituições de ensino superior, fomentou no mercado o aparecimento de empresas de informática dedicadas à conceção de software de acordo com as necessidades do próprio mercado, daí resultando software comercial à medida e software comercial de prateleira (COTS, Commercial Off-The-Shelf)). O software comercial, ao ser utilizado por um grande número de pessoas, atingindo facilmente, no caso do COTS, os milhares, tem condições para evoluir de acordo com as exigências sistemáticas do próprio mercado, atingindo elevados patamares no cumprimento de requisitos de qualidade, nomeadamente no que concerne à funcionalidade, fiabilidade, usabilidade, manutenibilidade, eficiência, portabilidade e qualidade na utilização. A utilização de software comercial na área do projeto de engenharia da construção é hoje em dia uma prática absolutamente generalizada. A seleção do software pode tornar-se um processo complexo especialmente naquelas áreas em que existe grande oferta. A utilização de critérios de avaliação bem definidos poderá agilizar o processo e dar maiores garantias no momento da decisão final. Neste documento apresenta-se uma proposta de metodologia para avaliação e comparação de softwares

On the role of syllabic neighbourhood density in the syllable structure effect in European Portuguese

Previous lexical decision masked priming studies have shown that the advantage of syllable-congruent primes over syllable-incongruent primes is observed for CV (e.g., JU.ROS [interests]), but not for CVC first-syllable words (e.g., TUR.BO [turbo]), giving rise to the so-called syllable structure effect (e.g., ju.ral-JU.ROS < jur.ga-JU.ROS; tur.ta-TUR.BO = tu.res-TUR.BO). This effect is puzzling since it is not accounted for either by the distributional frequencies of CV and CVC syllables in European Portuguese (EP) or by syllable complexity. Here we examine whether the number of words of the same syllabic length sharing the same (first) syllable in the same (first) position, a measure taken as an index of syllabic neighbourhood density, may account for the syllable structure effect. To that purpose, 36 EP skilled readers performed a lexical decision masked priming task in which 48 CV and 48 CVC words matched in the number of syllabic neighbours, amongst other variables, were preceded by syllable-congruent (e.g., ju.ral-JU.ROS and tur.ta-TURBO), syllable-incongruent (e.g., jur-ga-JU.ROS and tu.res-TUR.BO), and unrelated primes (e.g., pu.cas- JU.ROS and binva-TURBO). Syllable priming effects were still observed only for CV words, even though CVC words with a CV phonological structure (e.g., PEN.TE[comb] - /p'eti/) tended to behave similarly to CV words, suggesting that EP syllable effects may be driven by phonological factors.This study was conducted at the Psychology Research Centre (PSI/01662), University of Minho, and was supported by the Grant PD/BD/128464/2017 and also by the Grant POCI-01-0145-FEDER-028212 from the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology and the Portuguese Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education through national funds, and co-financed by FEDER through COMPETE2020 under the PT2020 Partnership Agreement

The Effect of Food Processing on the Antioxidant Properties of Ipomoea batatas

It is known that heat treatment can lead to physical and chemical changes that can decrease or alter the properties of food. This work evaluated the influence on the antioxidant activity of boiling, pressure, and microwave cooking processes on three selected sweet potato varieties (purple, orange, and yellow). The samples were analyzed for total phenols and anthocyanin content and antioxidant capacity. The cooking water of the boiling and pressure processing were also analyzed. The results demonstrated that the purple sweet potato had better phenolic compounds, anthocyanins, and antioxidant activity profiles than the other varieties studied. On the other hand, the yellow sweet potato was the variety that showed the lowest antioxidant activity after applying the different culinary processes. Microwave processing, particularly when applied to purple sweet potato samples, seemed to be the most suitable cooking process to extract the bioactive compounds with antioxidant activity. Related to the cooking water, there were discrepancies between the behavior of different sweet potato varieties, since not all the samples followed similar profiles. In conclusion, it is necessary to study sweet potatoes processed through various cooking methods for antioxidant properties and other characteristics, such as texture, flavor, and nutritional value.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Natural Products: Therapeutic Properties and Beyond II

Historically, natural products have contributed to drug discovery as a source of active molecules due to their great diversity and structural complexity. Thus, they have contributed to the development of drugs for applications in different therapeutic areas. In recent decades, there has been a paradigm shift in drug discovery strategies that has allowed for identifying new natural products that exhibit activities on therapeutic targets. Newman and Cragg studied the origin of 1330 new drugs that had been approved between 1981 and 2010 and found that 64% of them were somewhat related to natural compounds [1]. In a recent review by these same authors, it was noted that, within all of the drugs newly approved by the Food and Drug Administration between January 1981 and September 2019, compounds derived from natural products ranked second [2]. Besides the importance of the discovery of new molecules based on natural compounds, the concern today is focused on the therapeutic potential of secondary metabolites classified as drugs of abuse, such as derivatives of cannabis [3] and psilocybin [4], or even on the use of plants used ancestrally in medicine as well [5,6]. On the other hand, with the development of computational techniques, a decision has been made to study the possibilities of analyzing the pharmacological potential of natural products or their derivatives and converting these molecules into low toxicity active products. However, apart from the use of naturally occurring compounds in the field of health, they have been studied and are increasingly used in solutions, for instance in the agrochemical and food industries. After the success of the Special Issue “Natural Products: Therapeutic Properties and Beyond I”, this second edition aims to categorize the state of the art concerning scientific research on natural products, including their applications as compounds with added value to human health. This issue intends to be used as a text for academia or as a reference tool for researchers, particularly for those working in the fields of medicinal chemistry, toxicology, phytochemistry, and natural product chemistry, and for health and industry professionals.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Natural Products: Therapeutic Properties and Beyond II

Historically, natural products have contributed to drug discovery as a source of active molecules due to their great diversity and structural complexity. Thus, they have contributed to the development of drugs for applications in different therapeutic areas. In recent decades, there has been a paradigm shift in drug discovery strategies that has allowed for identifying new natural products that exhibit activities on therapeutic targets. Newman and Cragg studied the origin of 1330 new drugs that had been approved between 1981 and 2010 and found that 64% of them were somewhat related to natural compounds [1]. In a recent review by these same authors, it was noted that, within all of the drugs newly approved by the Food and Drug Administration between January 1981 and September 2019, compounds derived from natural products ranked second [2]. Besides the importance of the discovery of new molecules based on natural compounds, the concern today is focused on the therapeutic potential of secondary metabolites classified as drugs of abuse, such as derivatives of cannabis [3] and psilocybin [4], or even on the use of plants used ancestrally in medicine as well [5,6]. On the other hand, with the development of computational techniques, a decision has been made to study the possibilities of analyzing the pharmacological potential of natural products or their derivatives and converting these molecules into low toxicity active products. However, apart from the use of naturally occurring compounds in the field of health, they have been studied and are increasingly used in solutions, for instance in the agrochemical and food industries. After the success of the Special Issue “Natural Products: Therapeutic Properties and Beyond I”, this second edition aims to categorize the state of the art concerning scientific research on natural products, including their applications as compounds with added value to human health. This issue intends to be used as a text for academia or as a reference tool for researchers, particularly for those working in the fields of medicinal chemistry, toxicology, phytochemistry, and natural product chemistry, and for health and industry professionals.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

ACHADOS AUDIOLÓGICOS EM INDIVÍDUOS PORTADORES DE DIABETES MELLITUS TIPO 2: REVISÃO SISTEMÁTICA

TCC(graduação) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina. Centro de Ciências da Saúde. Fonoaudiologia.Introdução: O Diabetes Mellitus (DM) hoje é considerado uma epidemia mundial, trazendo grandes complicações para o sistema de saúde de todo o mundo, sendo as principais causas desse acontecimento: o envelhecimento da população, o estilo de vida cada vez menos saudável e o sedentarismo. As causas mais frequentes de alterações nos sistemas vestibular e auditivo são as atribuídas às disfunções no metabolismo dos carboidratos, afecções da tireoide, da suprarrenal e outros distúrbios metabólicos diversos. Dentre os distúrbios do metabolismo da glicose, o diabetes mellitus é a afecção mais relacionada aos distúrbios auditivos. Objetivo: realizar uma revisão sistemática da literatura sobre o Diabetes Mellitus do tipo 2 e os achados audiológicos nesta doença. Metodologia: conduziu-se uma busca por artigos nos idiomas português e inglês, nas bases de dados MEDLINE, PUBMED, LILACS (Literatura Latino-americana e do Caribe em Ciências da Saúde) e SCIELO (Scientific Electronic Library Online). De acordo com os objetivos da pesquisa os descritores levantados para a realização da pesquisa foram, em português, Diabetes Mellitus, Audição, Perda Auditiva, Perda Auditiva Neurossensorial, Audiometria, Audiometria de Resposta Evocada, Audiometria de Fala, Emissões Otoacústicas Espontâneas, Idoso e Adulto. Em Inglês: Diabetes Mellitus; Hearing; Hearing Loss; Hearing Loss, Sensorineural; Audiometry; Audiometry, Evoked Response; Audiometry Speech; Otoacoustic Emissions, Spontaneous; Aged e Adult. Resultados: considerando os descritores selecionados e suas combinações encontraram-se 919 artigos. Após a análise do título e resumo foram selecionados 182 artigos, sendo que destes, 151 eram duplicados. Desta forma, 30 artigos na íntegra foram selecionados para a análise.O teste mais utilizado foi a Audiometria Tonal Liminar, por meio da qual se verificou que o tipo de perda auditiva mais frequente em indivíduos com DM é do tipo neurossensorial, mas não se pode constatar qual o grau de perda auditiva mais encontrado. O exame de emissões otoacústicas mostrou-se também alterado. Em relação ao PEATE, 100% dos estudos apresentaram aumento na latência da onda V e aumento no intervalo interpico das ondas I-V. Conclusão: Os estudos mostraram que o DM afetam a audição periférica e central.The diabetes mellitus (DM) today is considered a worldwide epidemic, bringing great complications for health systems worldwide, being the main causes of events: the aging population, the lifestyle becoming less healthy and the physical inactivity. The most common causes of vestibular and auditory systems are attributed to dysfunctions in carbohydrate metabolism, thyroid disorders, adrenal gland and various other metabolic disorders. Among the disorders of glucose metabolism, diabetes mellitus is a condition more related to hearing disorders. Aim: To conduct a systematic review of the literature on Diabetes Mellitus Type 2 and more frequent audiological findings in this disease. Methodology: We conducted a search for articles in Portuguese and English languages, in MEDLINE, PUBMED, (Latin American and Caribbean Literature on Health Sciences) LILACS and SCIELO (Scientific Electronic Library Online). According to the research objectives descriptors collected for the research were in Portuguese: Diabetes Mellitus, Audição, Perda Auditiva, Perda Auditiva Neurossensorial, Audiometria, Audiometria de Resposta Evocada, Audiometria de Fala, Emissões Otoacústicas Espontâneas, Idoso e Adulto. In English, Diabetes Mellitus, Hearing, Hearing Loss, Sensorineural Hearing Loss, Auditory, Auditory Evoked Response, Speech Audiometry, Otoacoustic Emissions, Spontaneous, aged and Adult. Results: Considering the selected descriptors and their combinations were found 919 articles. After analyzing the title and abstract 182 articles were selected, and out of these, 151 were repeated. Thus, 31 full articles were selected for analysis.The most commonly used test is the pure tone audiometry, whereby it was found that the most common type of hearing loss in individuals with DM is sensorineural, but you cannot state what degree of hearing loss most commonly were found.The OAE (Otoacoustic Emissions) also changed. Regarding to the ABR (auditory brainstem response), 100 % of the studies showed an increase in wave V and increase in interpick intervals of waves I-V. Conclusion: Our studies showed that DM affect the peripheral and central hearing