Current Pharmaceutical Design - Volume 17, Issue 11, 2011

In the past decades attention has been focused on gender differences in the access to health care resources and therapies but little emphasis has been put on the understanding of the basic mechanisms of gender differences and different action of cardiovascular drugs. The basic mechanisms underlying cell death and apoptosis which affect the way organs and systems respond to injury differ in the two sexes. It is known that e Read More

It has become apparent over the past few decades that several factors can determine lethal or sublethal alterations of cardiovascular system cell function such as inflammatory reaction products, peptides and hormones. In turn, the loss of cellular components from the blood vessels wall and the heart tissue contributes to the development of cardiovascular diseases (CVD). Hence, in the recent years, the efforts of several rese Read More

The clinical presentation of heart disease is different between men and women and this distinction is pivotal for a correct diagnosis and an adequate treatment. However, the definition of symptoms classically associated with heart disease is mainly based on the characteristics of those reported in men. Chest pain or chest discomfort in women are therefore often regarded as “atypical” and these symptoms tend to be m Read More

Ischemic heart disease (IHD) is a leading cause of mortality and morbidity in most developed countries. Many studies revealed gender differences in the presentation, prevalence, and clinical outcomes of IHD. Compared with females, ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction is more often diagnosed in men. They also have a higher prevalence of IHD. These findings indicate that gender may have an important influence on I Read More

Heart failure (HF) represents a growing health issue with significant morbidity, expense, and mortality in western world. Despite a similar prevalence between gender our knowledge about this disease mostly come from studies perfomed in men. Instead, until now women have been under-represented in HF trials and this limits our knowledge of HF in women to extrapolation of findings from men. However according t Read More

For many years, the majority of the observational and epidemiological studies assessing coronary artery disease patients, national and international clinical guidelines, registries and randomized trials have focused almost exclusively on men whereas women were usually excluded in most series. This underrepresentation of women in the medical literature in this field has resulted in few data being available regarding the clinical c Read More

Gender differences in biological substrates of disease determine different clinical manifestations of CV disease with important implications for prevention, diagnosis and therapy in the two sexes. In women, the activity of sex hormones reduces the influence of CV risk factors during the reproductive age, and delays the onset of CHD of 2 decades compared to men. However, women as men suffer from CV events, and in Read More

Women tend to develop hypertension later as they transition into menopause, and during and after menopause the development of hypertension in women is independent of age and body mass index (BMI) but is related to menopause itself. One of the mechanisms of hypertension development in postmenopausal women is believed to be the lack of estrogen leading to vasoconstriction due to both reninangiotensin- aldosterone ( Read More

Cardiovascular diseases differ between men and women as do outcomes after therapeutic interventions. Management of these diseases, however, is generally guided by evidence from trials conducted predominantly in men, with few studies focused on women alone. Our goal is to review the sex/gender differences in cardiovascular therapies, which show many areas of uncertainty regarding women due to their small enrolme Read More

Bioconjugation, a novel technique is usually exploited to improve the biopharmaceutical aspects of a bioactive as well as afford its spatial and temporal distribution. The strategy enlightens newer vistas for delivery of drugs, peptides, enzymes, and oligonucleotides. Site specific delivery may be obtained by tailoring the conjugates as an inactive prodrug and designing polymer drug linkages susceptible to cleavage by specific e Read More