Current Pharmaceutical Biotechnology - Volume 12, Issue 5, 2011

This special international issue of ‘Current Pharmaceutical Biotechnology’, entitled “Drugs and pregnancy”, contains review articles on subjects concerning various molecular and pharmacological aspects of current obstetrics. In utero the fetus is exposed to a wide variety of foreign chemicals, which can enter via the transplacental transport. This exposure is commonly due to maternal medications, lifestyle factors, a Read More

It has become clear that almost any drug or chemical substance administered to the mother is able to cross the placenta to some extent, unless it is metabolized or altered during passage, or else its molecular size and low lipid solubility do not allow transplacental transfer. A number of transport systems have been identified in the placenta, which recognizes a wide variety of pharmacological active drugs as substrates. I Read More

CYP1A1, an enzyme of the cytochrome P450 superfamily, is the most important xenobiotic-metabolizing enzyme of the placenta for which relevant inducible activity has been demonstrated throughout pregnancy. CYP1A1 metabolizes several drugs and compounds widely used in pharmacotherapy or present in diets. At the same time, this enzyme plays a key role in the bioactivation of procarcinogens and proterat Read More

During the past decade there has been an explosion in the number of nanoparticulate drugs or drug delivery systems being explored, developed and marketed for the treatment and prevention of human diseases. While the potential dangers of drug administration in pregnancy are well known, there are circumstances where the benefits of maternal drug administration are perceived to outweigh the risks to the fetus. He Read More

Nitric oxide (NO) is a key molecule involved in a variety of biological functions throughout the whole body. Many studies have been devoted to establish the role of NO in perinatal medicine and the different findings have promoted the clinical use of NO donors as new pharmacological tools. NO regulates the vascular tone and blood flow by activating soluble guanylate cyclase in the vascular smooth muscles. NO is essential fo Read More

The fetus may be exposed to increased endogenous or synthetic glucocorticoid (GS) exposure in late gestation. Approximately 7% of pregnant women in Europe and North America are treated with synthetic GSs to promote lung maturation in fetuses at risk of preterm delivery. Maternal steroid treatment before preterm delivery is one of the best documented and most cost effective life saving treatments in prenatal med Read More

Different conventional anti-asthmatic and anti-allergic drugs are commonly used in pregnancy, including inhaled corticosteroids, long- and short-acting β-agonists, leukotriene modifiers, cromolyn, and theophylline. Alternatively, immunotherapy with allergens before and during pregnancy is accepted as a causal treatment of allergies, but the allergy specifity and severity in combination with a variety of application protocols a Read More

The aim of the present article was to review the role of the placenta function in the transfer of immunosuppressants and monoclonal antibodies used for the treatment of inflammatory bowel disease, as well as the available data regarding the safety of these therapies during pregnancy. Methotrexate can cause congenital abnormalities and is contraindicated during pregnancy. Available data suggest that thiopurines are s Read More

Thyroid disorders are quite a common health problem in pregnant women, thus adequate treatment in this period is very important in order to decrease maternal and fetal morbidity. The prevalence of hyperthyroidism is estimated to be present in approximately 0.2-0.4% of all pregnancies and the most common is Graves disease. Untreated hyperthyroidism is connected with disturbed fertilisation, recurrent miscarriages, pr Read More

Epilepsy represents the most common maternal neurological disorder requiring continuous treatment during pregnancy. Maintaining optimum seizure control is an important objective in pregnancy, and the majority of women with epilepsy will need to continue antiepileptic drugs (AEDs). AEDs are frequently used to treat several other conditions, such as headaches and mood disorders. They have been associated with an i Read More

The recent H1N1 influenza pandemic has highlighted the potential for viral infections to cause severe disease in mothers disproportionate to the general population and have deleterious effects on the fetus. Vaccines have been used in pregnant women for over 200 years. Current guidelines recommend vaccination with only inactivated virus due to potential risk to mother and fetus with live vaccine. The exception is during ti Read More

Over the past decade therapeutic interventions during pregnancy, including the use of drugs, has increased; for example, the prescription use of opioids and nonopioid analgesics for pain management during pregnancy has increased by about 40%. Additionally, women also self-medicate during pregnancy with opioids, and are treated with methadone and buprenorphine which are used as substitution therapy for substanc Read More

Assessing drug transport across the human placental barrier is of vital importance in order to guarantee drug safety during pregnancy. However, due to ethical reasons, in vivo fetal development risk assessment studies related to maternal drugs and chemicals exposure remain extremely limited. To overcome any ethical issues, several in vitro models applying primary trophoblastic cells, immortal cell lines and tissue explan Read More

Objective: The purpose of this study was to characterize the human term placental villous tissue explant culture model as a tool to study the formation and efflux of 1-chloro-2,4-dinitrobenzene (CDNB) conjugate 2,4-dinitrophenyl-Sglutathione (DNP-SG) as a model system for phase II metabolism and ATP-binding cassette (ABC) transporter-mediated cellular efflux. Methods: Placental tissue samples were obtained after Read More

We present a new approach to distinguish between non-ergodic and ergodic behavior. Performing ensemble averaging in a subpopulation of individual molecules leads to a mean value that can be similar to the mean value obtained in an ergodic system. The averaging is carried out by minimizing the variation between the sum of the temporal averaged mean square deviation of the simulated data with respect to the lo Read More

MMP-9 enzyme recognizes a peptide sequence Lys-Gly-Pro-Arg-Ser-Leu-Ser-Gly-Lys and cleaves the peptide into two parts. We synthesized a dual fluorophore beacon consisting of 5-FAM and Cy5 dyes. The fluorescence emission of the fluorescein moiety is dramatically quenched by Cy5 molecule due to Förster Resonance Energy Transfer (FRET) and the fluorescence of Cy5 is strongly enhanced. Upon addition of MMP-9 e Read More

Three blending methods were introduced to combine a biodegradable cationic- polyurethane (PUg3) and polyethylenimine (PEI) together with DNA by different mixing sequences. Results of gel electrophoresis assays and particle size measurements show that complexes prepared by method 1 and 3 bear an ability to condense DNA into small nanoparticles. On the contrary, the use of method 2 in making complexes produces sig Read More

Due to the high affinity of metallothioneins (MTs) toward various transition metal ions, MTs play an important role in regulation of essential metals, detoxification of heavy metals, and scavenging of free radicals. In this review, we focus on the recent development on the metal release from and sequestration by MTs characterized by electrochemistry and surface plasmon resonance (SPR). The investigation of metal release and c Read More