Search Results (629)

Macroalgae (seaweeds) produce unique bioactive metabolites that have enabled their survival for millions of years, offering significant potential for human benefits. In the Israeli Mediterranean Sea, no comprehensive systematic surveys of seaweeds have been published since the 1990s, and their chemical composition remains largely unexplored. This study presents an extensive survey of intertidal seaweed communities along the shallow Israeli coastline, documenting their spatial, temporal, and biochemical diversity. Of the 320 specimens collected, 55 seaweed species were identified: 29 red (Rhodophyta), 14 brown (Phaeophyceae), and 12 green (Chlorophyta). A significant shift in species abundance was documented, with a single dominant annual bloom occurring during spring, unlike previously reported biannual blooms. Chemical analysis of the dominant species revealed significant seasonal variations in compound levels, with higher protein content in winter and increased antioxidant capacity during spring. Phenolic and natural sunscreen compounds (mycosporine-like amino acids, MAAs) showed no general seasonal trend. These findings highlight the optimal environmental conditions for seaweed growth and underscore their potential for aquaculture and biotechnology. We hypothesize that the ecologically unique conditions of the Israeli Mediterranean Sea may foster resilient seaweed species enriched with distinctive chemical properties, suitable for nutritional, health, pharmaceutical, and nutraceutical applications, particularly as climate-adaptive bioresources. Full article

Background/Objectives: In many parts of the world, pharmacists hold the primary responsibility for providing safe and effective pharmacotherapy. A key aspect is the availability of appropriate medicines for each individual patient. When industrially manufactured medicines are unsuitable or unavailable, pharmacists can prepare tailor-made medicines. While this principle applies globally, practices vary between countries. In the Netherlands, the preparation of medicines in pharmacies is well-established and integrated into routine healthcare. This narrative review explores the role and significance of extemporaneous compounding, pharmacy preparations and related product care in the Netherlands. Methods: Pharmacists involved in pharmacy preparations across various professional sectors, including community and hospital pharmacies, central compounding facilities, academia, and the professional pharmacists’ organisation, provided detailed and expert insights based on the literature and policy documents while also sharing their critical perspectives. Results: We present arguments supporting the need for pharmacy preparations and examine their position and role in community and hospital pharmacies in the Netherlands. Additional topics are discussed, including the regulatory and legal framework, outsourcing, quality assurance, standardisation, education, and international context. Specific pharmacy preparation topics, often with a research component and a strong focus on product care, are highlighted, including paediatric dosage forms, swallowing difficulties and feeding tubes, hospital-at-home care, reconstitution of oncolytic drugs and biologicals, total parenteral nutrition (TPN), advanced therapy medicinal products (ATMPs), radiopharmaceuticals and optical tracers, clinical trial medication, robotisation in reconstitution, and patient-centric solid oral dosage forms. Conclusions: The widespread acceptance of pharmacy preparations in the Netherlands is the result of a unique combination of strict adherence to tailored regulations that ensure quality and safety, and patient-oriented flexibility in design, formulation, and production. This approach is further reinforced by the standardisation of a broad range of formulations and procedures across primary, secondary and tertiary care, as well as by continuous research-driven innovation to develop new medicines, formulations, and production methods. Full article

Cellulose, the most abundant organic polymer in soil, is degraded by the action of microbial communities. Cellulolytic taxa are widespread in soils, enhancing the biodegradation of cellulose by the synergistic action of different cellulase enzymes. β-glucosidases are the last enzymes responsible for the degradation of cellulose by producing glucose from the conversion of the disaccharide cellobiose. Different soils from the states of Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, and New York were analyzed by direct DNA extraction, PCR analysis, and next generation sequencing of amplicon sequences coding for β-glucosidase genes. To determine the community structure and diversity of microorganisms carrying β-glucosidase genes, amplicon sequence variant analysis was performed. Results showed that the majority of β-glucosidase genes did not match any known phylum or genera with an average of 84% of sequences identified as unclassified. The forest soil sample from New York showed the highest value with 95.62%. When identification was possible, the bacterial phyla Pseudomonadota, Actinomycetota, and Chloroflexota were found to be dominant microorganisms with β-glucosidase genes in soils. The Delaware soil showed the highest diversity with phyla and genera showing the presence of β-glucosidase gene sequences in bacteria, fungi, and plants. However, the Chloroflexota genus Kallotanue was detected in 3 out of the 4 soil locations. When phylogenetic analysis of unclassified β-glucosidase genes was completed, most sequences aligned with the Chloroflexota genus Kallotenue and the Pseudomonadota species Sphingomonas paucimobilis. Since most sequences did not match known phyla, there is tremendous potential to discover new enzymes for possible biotechnological and pharmaceutical applications. Full article

Background/Objectives: Hypertension (HTN) continues to be a leading cause of death and disability in older adults, especially in the southeastern United States. A cross-sectional study was conducted to evaluate the relationships among measured, diagnosed, and treated (HTN) in community-dwelling adults participating in student-led health screenings in eastern Alabama. Methods: Between 2017 and 2019, students from health-related disciplines facilitated screenings at 23 community and independent living sites to conduct health assessments, including measuring blood pressure (BP), obtaining medical history, and evaluating current prescriptions. Statistical analyses including chi-square tests, t-tests, and backward stepwise linear regression were performed. Results: The current sample includes data from 357 adults aged 60 to 99 years (mean age 74.6 ± 8.7), who were 70.9% females, 60.8% identifying as Black/African American (BA), and 36.8% residing in rural areas. The majority of clients had a prior HTN diagnosis (71.1%) and/or currently measured HTN (78.7%). Forty-three percent of adults screened had measured, diagnosed, and pharmaceutically treated HTN, while 31% had measured but untreated HTN. Black clients had higher measured systolic and diastolic BP and were more likely to also have been diagnosed with HTN (p < 0.05 for all). Linear regression indicated that lower systolic BP was predicted by not living alone (p = 0.003), White race (p = 0.004), and previous HTN diagnosis (p = 0.012), while female gender (p = 0.079) and decreasing body mass index (p = 0.053) had marginal predictive value. Conclusions: These results indicate that awareness and screening of HTN in this population are noteworthy, though management of the disease through ongoing screening and referrals is essential to reduce disparities. Full article

Chronic diseases are a leading cause of death worldwide and have a significant negative impact on public health, overall well-being, national economies, and the long-term sustainability of already burdened health systems. In addressing some of the current health challenges, the contribution of pharmacists and community pharmacies is of particular significance. Pharmacists play a vital role in the medication use process, enhancing the efficacy of pharmacological interventions and facilitating the delivery of health services. Community pharmacies occupy a key position within the healthcare system, acting as a primary point of contact with the public and frequently representing the most accessible healthcare facility for patients. In recent times, community pharmacies have undergone a process of adaptation, shifting from a narrow focus on the dispensing of medications towards a more comprehensive approach that is patient-centered and incorporates a range of healthcare services, while also prioritizing the quality of the services provided. This work aims to explore the role of pharmacists in the provision of pharmaceutical services in three countries with distinct healthcare systems, examining how these services operate, the requirements for their delivery, the associated remuneration structures, and the extent of out-of-pocket costs for patients—ultimately analyzing their impact on health outcomes. Full article

Background/Objective: Fentanyl plays a pivotal role in the opioid epidemic, defined by four waves of overdose deaths. To analyse fentanyl research trends, examining its links to mental health, pharmaceutical development, healthcare, diseases, and pathophysiology within the broader social and health context of the time. Methods: To understand the evolution of scientific publications on fentanyl and its relationship to the opioid crisis, a search using Web of Science Core Collection and PubMed was conducted. A total of 53,670 documents were retrieved related to opioid scientific production, among which 1423 articles (3%) focused specifically on fentanyl. The 21,546 MeSH terms identified in these documents were analysed by publication year and specific fields: Psychiatry and Psychology, Chemicals and Drugs, Healthcare, Diseases, and Phenomena and Processes. R-statistical/FactoMineR libraries were used for the correspondence analysis. Results: In the first overdose death wave, research focused on improving therapies and reducing side effects. The second wave emphasised detoxification methods with naltrexone, methadone, and behavioural therapies. The third wave addressed psychological treatments and HIV-syringe-sharing prevention. The fourth wave prioritised less addictive analogues and understanding consumer profiles to combat the epidemic. Conclusions: Fentanyl research has evolved alongside real-world challenges, reinforcing the connection between patients’ needs, healthcare professionals’ roles, illicit users, policymakers, and the research community’s contributions to addressing both therapeutic use and its broader societal impact. These findings highlight the necessity for an interdisciplinary approach to scientific research integrating prevention, treatment, education, legal reform, and social support, emphasising the need for public health policies and collaborative research to mitigate its impact. Full article

(1) Background: Patient-centered care for individuals with breast cancer requires multidisciplinary cooperation to ensure the appropriate use of medication and prevent medication-related problems. Pharmaceutical care has been associated with improved adherence in breast cancer management, a factor linked to patient outcomes and mortality. This study aims to summarize and explore the provision and utilization of pharmaceutical services for breast cancer patients by pharmacists. (2) Methods: A scoping review was performed to assess the pharmacist’s role in providing pharmaceutical services for patients with breast cancer. A comprehensive review of four databases (PubMed, Ovid Embase, Ovid International Pharmaceutical Abstracts, and Scopus) was completed between 1 January 2012 and 8 April 2025 according to PRISMA-ScR framework. (3) Results: A total of 46 articles met the inclusion criteria, which included RCTs, observatory studies, cohort studies, and reviews. Findings suggest that both clinical and community pharmacists play an important role in prevention, management, and education for breast cancer patients. (4) Conclusions: Pharmacists can improve health outcomes by providing pharmaceutical service in breast cancer care. Optimizing interventions, expanding services, and evaluating long-term cost-effectiveness is needed in the future. Full article

The Stability Toolkit for the Appraisal of Bio/Pharmaceuticals’ Level of Endurance (STABLE) is introduced and proposed as a comprehensive tool and software to evaluate the stability of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) under various stress conditions. In the pharmaceutical industry, stability testing is a critical step in the drug development process, ensuring the quality, safety, and efficacy of APIs. Traditional stability tests—such as real-time, accelerated, and forced degradation testing—often face challenges, including inconsistent interpretation and implementation across different regions and organizations. STABLE addresses these challenges by providing a standardized and holistic approach to assessing drug stability across five key stress conditions: oxidative, thermal, acid-catalyzed hydrolysis, base-catalyzed hydrolysis, and photostability. Beyond its role as an evaluation tool, STABLE also serves as a practical guide for chemists, encouraging a more complete and thoughtful approach to stability studies. While many investigations focus solely on acid- and base-catalyzed hydrolysis, other critical conditions—such as photostability—are often underexplored or entirely omitted. By highlighting the importance of evaluating all relevant degradation pathways, STABLE promotes more robust and informed stability testing protocols. The index utilizes a color-coded scoring system to quantify and compare stability, facilitating consistent assessments across different APIs. This paper discusses the methodology of STABLE, including the scoring system and specific criteria applied under each condition. This tool is introduced to reflect intrinsic degradation susceptibility under forced conditions. The software is freely available as an open-source tool at bit.ly/STABLE2025, enabling broader accessibility and implementation across the pharmaceutical research community. Full article

Background/Objectives: How to best assist people living with dementia (PLWD) and their care partners to maximize quality of life and quality of living, through appropriate and effective non-pharmaceutical approaches, remains a focus of dementia societies and organizations worldwide. This scoping review explored the types, opportunities, benefits and challenges of outdoor-based care and support programs for community-dwelling PLWD and their care partners. Methods: The methodological framework proposed by Arksey & O’Malley (2005) and modified by Levac et al. (2010) was followed. Four research databases were searched from January 2000 to November 2024; 2817 articles were retrieved and 20 met inclusion criteria and underwent data extraction. Results: Program types included the following: nature-based, care farm, green care farm, and farm-based dementia care programs, representing more than half of the included articles; health walks; and outdoor horticulture/garden/gardening programs. The number of PLWD participants ranged from 4 to 136. The total number of care partner participants was 151 and the total number of service provider participants was 87. The essence of, and connections with, nature and the outdoors had notable relevance and value for PLWD. Reported benefits, assessed quantitatively and qualitatively, were numerous and those in the social domain were reported most often. Identified challenges and barriers were related to risks and safety and program development, and implementation and delivery. Conclusions: The noteworthy potential of outdoor-based care and support programs to promote and enhance the quality of life and quality of living of community-dwelling PLWD and their care partners was elucidated. As most PLWD prefer to, and do, continue to reside in their homes, including those with advancing symptoms, the findings have significant relevance and implications for real-world practice and policy. Future research addressing current gaps will strengthen this growing field of dementia research. Full article

Background: Due to their participation in patient care, pharmacists frequently face various ethical decisions that must be made. Every day, pharmacists encounter ethical challenges in any pharmaceutical workplace. This study aims to assess the attitude and awareness among pharmacy students and pharmacists regarding general and professional ethics. Methods: This study was cross-sectional, using an interview-based questionnaire. Pharmacy students from Yarmouk University volunteered to approach other pharmacy students and pharmacists to complete the questionnaire using a convenient sampling method. Results: A total of 1737 pharmacy students and pharmacists participated in this study. Among the 691 participants who are currently practicing pharmacists, 549 (79.4%) reported working in a community pharmacy. About half of the pharmacy students (53.6%) had studied a course in ethics, while 110 (15.9%) of the pharmacists had not. While students and pharmacists have shown significantly different attitudes, less than 20% of the participants demonstrated a high level of awareness regarding the pharmacy code of ethics. On the other hand, more than 60% of pharmacy students and practicing pharmacists concurred that they might permit others to carry out the duties of a pharmacist. Surprisingly, the data revealed that student pharmacists performed better than practicing pharmacists, highlighting that students appreciate the principles of professionalism and that exposure to a work environment can help modulate negative behavior and beliefs. Conclusions: These findings underscore the need for ongoing ethical education and training for both pharmacy students and practicing pharmacists to ensure that everyone in the field upholds a high standard of moral behavior in patient care. Full article

How to best support people living with dementia and their care partners living in the community to maximize their quality of life and quality of living through appropriate and effective non-pharmaceutical approaches remains a focus of dementia societies and organizations worldwide. This paper examines the views of a range of stakeholders about the potential of green care farms in Canada, a country new to the concept of the green care farm approach to dementia support and care. Data were collected in Southern Ontario, Canada, between June and August 2022 via an online questionnaire (n = 12) and 1-1 interviews (n = 6). Questionnaire data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, specifically counts and frequencies. All interviews were audio-recorded and fully transcribed verbatim and analyzed thematically. We report thematic findings relating to the understanding of care farms for people living with dementia, perceived benefits of care farming, perceived enablers and barriers to implementing such an approach, and the hopes, motivations, and expectations of different stakeholders. The potential of green care farming for people living with dementia and their care partners in the Canadian context was evident. There are implications for care policy and practice relating to the promotion of (social) health and wellbeing for people living with dementia. Full article

Groundwater remains a critical water source for urban communities, particularly in rapidly urbanizing countries such as the Philippines. However, intensifying anthropogenic pressures have contributed to widespread contamination from heavy metals, nutrients, pathogens, volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and emerging pollutants, including pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs). This review synthesizes findings from 130 peer-reviewed studies on groundwater monitoring and remediation, emphasizing technological advancements and their application in urban environments. The literature is categorized into five thematic areas: monitoring technologies, contaminant profiles, remediation strategies, Philippine-specific case studies, and alignment with global frameworks. Recent innovations—such as Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled systems, remote sensing, biosensors, and artificial intelligence/machine-learning (AI/ML) models—show strong potential for real-time and predictive monitoring. Despite these advancements, technology adoption in the Philippines remains limited due to regulatory, technical, and infrastructural constraints. This review identifies key research and implementation gaps, particularly in the monitoring of emerging contaminants and the integration of data into policy-making and urban planning. To address these challenges, a conceptual framework is proposed to support more sustainable, technology-driven, and context-sensitive groundwater management in heavily urbanized areas. Full article

Anthozoa is a species-rich class with an innate immune system that acts as a defensive tool and shares many of its cellular pathways with mammalian immune responses. In addition to immune-related strategies (e.g., allorecognition and xenorecognition), anthozoans have evolved to use compounds or toxins for chemical communication, defense, or predation, which may exhibit biological activities useful for human health, mainly antiviral, antibacterial, anti-inflammatory, anticancer, and antitumor properties of pharmaceutical interest. These compounds/toxins can be alkaloids, amino acids, proteins, ceramides, diterpenes, and sesquiterpenes and are mainly distributed into Hexacorallia and Octocorallia. Anthozoans are enriched in defensive enzymes, which can either be found in anthozoan species or their symbionts and help them survive in hostile conditions. Studies related to genomics and transcriptomics using advanced sequencing efforts revealed the presence of genetic elements in anthozoans that help them survive against abiotic and biotic stressors in the marine environment. This review presents developments and highlights the current state of knowledge about anthozoans’ chemical weaponry that can drive further bioprospection of anthozoan species producing compounds and toxins which may be useful in biotechnological applications. Omics research in Anthozoa is still nascent, and more efforts are required to fully understand the chemical ecology, diversity, and possible biotechnological applications of cnidarian genes and their products. Full article

Soil microbial communities are essential for the natural attenuation of organic pollutants, yet their ecological responses under long-term contamination remain insufficiently understood. This study examined the bacterial community structure and the abundance of dechlorinating bacteria at a decommissioned pharmaceutical-chemical site in northern Jiangsu Province, China, where the primary pollutants were dichloromethane, 1,2-dichloroethane, and toluene. Eighteen soil samples from the surface (0.2 m) and deep (2.2 m) layers were collected using a Geoprobe-7822DT system and analyzed for physicochemical properties and microbial composition via 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing. The results showed that the bacterial community composition was significantly shaped by the soil pH, moisture content, pollutant type, and depth. Dechlorinating bacteria were detected at all sites but exhibited low relative abundance, with higher concentrations in the surface soils. Desulfuromonas, Desulfitobacterium, and Desulfovibrio were the dominant dechlorinators, while Dehalococcoides appeared only in the deep soils. A network analysis revealed positive correlations between the dechlorinators and BTEX-degrading and fermentative taxa, indicating potential cooperative interactions in pollutant degradation. However, the low abundance of dechlorinators suggests that the intrinsic bioremediation capacity is limited. These findings provide new insights into microbial ecology under complex organic pollution, and support the need for integrated remediation strategies that enhance microbial functional potential in legacy-contaminated soils. Full article

The COVID-19 pandemic has profoundly influenced urban planning and disease management in residential areas. Focusing on Beijing as a case study (3898 communities), this research develops a big data analytics framework integrating anonymized mobile phone signals (China Mobile), location-based services (AMAP.com), and municipal health records to quantify COVID-19 transmission dynamics. Using logistic regression, we analyzed 15 indicators across four dimensions: mobility behavior, host demographics, spatial characteristics, and facility accessibility. Our analysis reveals three key determinants: (1) Population aged 65 and above (OR = 62.8, p < 0.001) and (2) housing density (OR = 9.96, p = 0.026) significantly increase transmission risk, while (3) population density exhibits a paradoxical negative effect (β = −3.98, p < 0.001) attributable to targeted interventions in high-density zones. We further construct a validated risk prediction model (AUC = 0.7; 95.97% accuracy) enabling high-resolution spatial targeting of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs). The framework provides urban planners with actionable strategies—including senior activity scheduling and ventilation retrofits—while advancing scalable methodologies for infectious disease management in global urban contexts. Full article