Current Pharmaceutical Design - Volume 21, Issue 32, 2015

The number of elderly patients using anticoagulant and antiplatelet treatment in prevention of thromboembolism has significantly increased in recent years. It was believed for many years that those patients may be at higher risk for hemorhages during ocular surgery. Different strategies were proposed to prevent these complications, including discontinuation of anticoagulants, dose reduction, or substitution with low mole Read More

Nutritional supplements are widely taken by the general population and several of these products are marketed specifically to improve eye health. The aim of this review is to summarise the evidence for the benefit of supplementation with antioxidant vitamins and other micronutrients for three of the most common eye diseases of the elderly: age-related macular degeneration (AMD), cataract and dry eye syndrome (DES). Altho Read More

Elevated eye pressure is the main risk factor for glaucoma; intraocular pressure rises when the ratio between aqueous humor formation (inflow) and its outflow is unbalanced. Currently, the main goal of medical treatment is the reduction of intraocular pressure. Five main classes of topical drugs are available; they include betablockers, carbonic anhydrase inhibitors, prostaglandin derivatives, sympathomimetics and miotics. Read More

Uveitis is a term applied to a broad range of conditions characterized by intraocular inflammation. The pharmacological treatment of uveitis is controversial, with limited high-level evidence to inform most of the key treatment decisions that face the patient and clinician on a daily basis. In this review we identified twelve systematic reviews (including two Cochrane reviews) focused on key therapeutic questions in infectious Read More

Macular edema (ME) is a common, final pathway for many different ocular and systemic diseases. The most common diseases include: diabetic retinopathy (DR), retinal vascular disorders (such as central and branch retinal vein occlusion), and uveitis. The complex and multifactorial pathophysiological mechanisms leading to ME, are still poorly understood. Inflammation plays a crucial role in the genesis of ME, as dem Read More

Several medications are associated with retinal vascular toxicity. These include intraocular aminoglycosides, oral contraceptives, interferon alpha, several other agents, and talc, which occurs as a vehicle in some oral medications that may be abused intravenously. As a group, these entities represent a small but clinically relevant category of retinal toxicity from medications. Some of the manifestations (e.g., retinal vascular Read More

Proliferative vitreoretinopathy (PVR) can occur in eyes with rhegmatogenous retinal detachment (RRD) or after RRD surgery, and it is the most common cause of failure of this surgery, accounting for about 75% of all primary failures. Complex biological pathways induce PVR development, with growth factors and cytokines from the vitreous and from the serum (as a result of the breakdown of the blood-retinal barrier) stimu Read More

Endophthalmitis following intravitreal injection is uncommon. There are currently no randomized clinical trials evaluating the role of prophylactic topical antibiotics in this setting. Many large series have reported that topical antibiotics do not decrease, and may in fact increase the rate of endophthalmitis. The reason for this apparent paradoxical finding is unknown but may be due to changes in conjunctival flora due to rep Read More

Pseudophakic cystoid macular edema (PCME) remains the most common cause of poor visual outcome following cataract surgery. Whereas acute PCME may resolve itself spontaneously, some patients will suffer from vision impairment and will be difficult to treat. Although PCME has already been described approximately 50 years ago, its pathophysiology remains uncertain and a multitude of mechanisms have been suggeste Read More

High myopia is a major cause of uncorrectable visual impairment. It imposes major challenges and costs for refractive correction, and for the treatment of associated pathological complications. In the last 60 years, there has been a marked increase in the prevalence of high myopia in younger generations in developed countries in East and Southeast Asia, and there are signs of similar, but less pronounced increases in Read More

Diabetic macular edema (DME) represents the most common cause of vision loss in patients affected by diabetes mellitus. Although the pathophysiology of DME is not wholly understood, vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) has been identified as a key contributor to the development of DME. In addition, latest information suggests that acute and chronic inflammatory changes occur, contributing to the D Read More

PET/CT with choline is a diagnostic tool useful for imaging prostate cancer patients. The overall published papers in this field are referred to three variants of the same radiopharmaceutical: 11C-Choline, 18FMethylcholine and 18F-Ethylcholine. As no data has been reported on the theoretical differences between these three variants of radiolabeled choline, this study aims to explore the knowledge on the physiological distributi Read More

Current clinical practice guidelines recommend dosing anti-tuberculosis drugs according to ideal body weight and provide dosing caps for most first-line agents. However, this recommendation may be placing corpulent patients with tuberculosis at risk as increased total body weight is associated with an increased risk of clinical failure. Patients with diabetes are at an increased risk of developing tuberculosis and typicall Read More

Background: Inhaled corticosteroids (ICS) treatment for asthma control is generally focused on lung function and symptoms, but inadequately correlated with airway inflammation. Objective: To compare asthma control in a group of patients whose treatment was based on fraction of exhaled nitric oxide (FENO) and sputum eosinophils (intervention group) with a group in whom treatment was based on clinical score (co Read More

Lung cancer is the leading cause of death from cancer worldwide with limited available treatment options in absence of specific molecular alteration. New therapeutic approaches for addressing non small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) are urgently needed. Angiogenesis plays a central role in the tumor growth and metastatic dissemination which stimulates multiple cells to build new abnormal microvessels and leads to tumor Read More