Current Pharmaceutical Design - Volume 21, Issue 11, 2015

The abuse of licit and illicit drugs is a worldwide issue that is a cause for concern in pregnant women. It may lead to complications in pregnancy that may affect the mother, fetus, and /or neonate. The effects of any substance on the developing embryo and fetus are dependent upon dosing, timing, duration of drug exposure, and the extent of drug distribution. Teratogenic effects have been described when exposure takes pla Read More

Depression is a chronic, recurrent and long-term disorder characterized by high rates of impairment and several comorbidities. Early life stress (ELS) is associated with the increased risk for developing depression in adulthood, influences its clinical course and predicts a poorer treatment outcome. Stressful life events play an important role in the pathogenesis of depression, being well established as acute triggers of psych Read More

The modern concept of stress is based on responses to events or factors (“stressors”) experienced as aversive, threatening or excessive for maintaining physiological equilibrium of an organism. Prolonged exposure to stressors, particularly during early life, is strongly associated with later psychiatric disorders. Underlying mechanistic connections between stress responses and development of psychiatric illnesses remain un Read More

The impact of early physical and social environments on life-long pathological phenotypes is well known and there is now compelling evidence that stressful experiences during gestation or early in life can lead to enhanced susceptibility to mental illness. Here, we discuss the data from preclinical studies aimed at investigating the molecular consequences of the exposure to stressful events during prenatal or early postn Read More

Schizophrenia is a complex pathology characterized by the occurrence of a variety of symptoms classified as positive, negative and cognitive. Although the exact etiopathogenesis of this disorder has not been unraveled yet, many theories have been endorsed during the last years. Among these, the neurochemical theories have been the most suited, considering the dopaminergic and glutamatergic dysfunctions to be mainl Read More

Stress is an inevitable part of human life and it is experienced even before birth. Stress to some extent could be considered normal and even necessary for the survival and the regular psychological development during childhood or adolescence. However, exposure to prolonged stress could become harmful and strongly impact mental health increasing the risk of developing psychiatric disorders. Recent studies have att Read More

Childhood maltreatment (CM) is all too frequent among western societies, with an estimated prevalence of 10 to 15%. CM associates with increased risk of several psychiatric disorders, and therefore represents a worrying public and socioeconomic burden. While associated clinical outcomes are well characterized, determining by which mechanisms early-life adverse experiences affect mental health over the lifespan is a major c Read More

Recent advances in medical care have significantly improved the survival rate of neonates who suffer a hypoxic/ ischemic event, before, during, or after birth. These infants are extremely vulnerable to brain injury and are at high risk of developing motor and cognitive abnormalities later on in life. The regional distribution of perinatal brain injury varies, and depends primarily on; the severity, pattern and type of insult, the meta Read More

This study aimed to investigate the safety and feasibility of intracoronary injection of human umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cell to the very old patients with coronary chronic total occlusion. 15 consecutive patients received mesenchymal stem cells from human umbilical cord in epicardial coronary artery supplying collateral circulation. The patients were randomly allocated to low-dose 3x106, mid-dose 4x106 and high-dose Read More

Neonatal hypoxic-ischemic (HI) injury still remains an important issue as it is a frequent cause of neonatal death and life-long neurobehavioral and cognitive dysfunction. In spite of the decades of research which led us to a better knowledge of the pathological mechanism of hypoxic-ischemic brain injury, the clinical use of potential neuroprotective drugs (including, among others, excitatory amino acids antagonists, free radical Read More

Radical prostatectomy (RP) is the most commonly employed curative intervention for the treatment of prostate cancer. However, due to the proximity of the cavernous nerves (CN) to the prostate, RP results in transient and/often permanent erectile dysfunction (ED). While the prevention of traction injuries during the RP is critical for the preservation of erectile function, several preclinical studies have demonstrated the be Read More

Objectives: To evaluate the relationship between the five common polymorphisms in miRNAs (miR-146a rs2910164 G>C, miR-149 rs2292832 C>T, miR-196a2 rs11614913 C>T, miR-499 rs3746444 A>G and miR-27a rs895819 A>G), and breast cancer (BC) risk. Methods: Meta-analyses were performed on 15 published studies involving 8, 361 BC patients and 8, 504 cancer-free controls. There were 8 studies with 4, 314 cases Read More

Objective: Bariatric surgery has been reported to be very effective in the remission of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). However, the mechanism is still under debate. Nesfatin-1, a recently discovered anorexigenic neuropeptide, was reported to be very important in glucose metabolism and regulating food intake. In this study, the effects of bariatric surgery on the expression and regulation of nesfatin-1 were discussed. Meth Read More

Histone deacetylases (HDACs), which act on acetylated histones and/or other non-histone protein substrates, represent validated epigenetic targets for the treatment of cancer and other human diseases. The inhibition of HDAC activity was shown to induce cell cycle arrest, differentiation, apoptosis as well as a decrease in proliferation, angiogenesis, migration, and cell resistance to chemotherapy. Targeting single HDAC iso Read More