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Drug safety during pregnancy

  Pregnant people with mental health disorders such as depression or bipolar disorder often face an impossible decision: risk their health or their future child's health by discontinuing or continuing their medication. One in ten pregnant people are prescribed psychiatric drugs during pregnancy, but searching “is psychiatric drug safe to take during pregnancy” leads to one common result: not enough data. Many researchers, clinicians, and ethicists want to remedy this oversight and provide patients with the data they need to understand any potential risks for them and their fetuses. Pregnant people are not often included in clinical trials despite efforts to make research more inclusive over the past few decades through legislation by the FDA and the United States Department of Health and Human Services. Of the 468 drugs approved by the FDA between 1980 and 2000, the risk of negative effects in pregnant people was undetermined in more than 90%. This often leaves clinicians in a toug
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Nanoparticle drug delivery targets an intracellular source of pain

Sensing and responding to pain is a mechanism, and when exposed to a painful stimulus, our body initiates responses to avoid further damage and initiate appropriate wound healing processes. However, damaged tissue or chronic conditions (e.g. arthritis or diabetic neuropathy) can dysregulate pain pathways, resulting in chronic pain, which is both debilitating and difficult to treat. While opioids remain the most effective treatment, there are many unwanted side-effects including tolerance (analgesic effect diminishes over time) and dependence, which are major contributors to the present, the growing global opioid epidemic. G protein-coupled receptors are cell-surface sensors that play Vital roles in responding to painful stimuli and relaying these pain signals from sensory neurons to the spinal cord and brain. curiously, we and others have previously demonstrated that when GPCRs such as the Neurokinin 1 receptor are stimulated during pain, they undergo endocytosis and relocate to intrac
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Drug-delivery vehicles and their efficiency toward cancer treatment

Cancer is the second leading cause of death globally with a high mortality rate, causing 9 million annual deaths with nearly 18 million new cases every year. the main feature of the disease is the high proliferation rate of abnormal cells that grow beyond their usual boundaries of the body organs, resulting in a malignant tumor or neoplasm. Any organ of the human body can be affected with cancer but the lung, female breast, bowed, prostate, and liver are prone to be affected the most. Several factors may cause cancer, Including physical carcinogens such as ultraviolet and ionizing radiation; chemical carcinogens like asbestos, tobacco, and arsenic; and biological carcinogens such as infection from viruses, bacteria, parasites, or cellular contamination. The World Health Organization has suggested that there are three important steps for a greater probability of survival or less morbidity; awareness, clinical diagnosis, and treatment. In the last few decades, a lot of attention has been
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Drug Delivery Systems

What are drug delivery systems? Drug delivery systems are engineered technologies for the targeted delivery and/or controlled release of therapeutic agents. Drugs have long been used to improve health and extend lives. The practice of drug delivery has changed dramatically in the past few decades and even greater changes are anticipated in the near future. Biomedical engineers have contributed substantially to our understanding of the physiological barriers to efficient drug delivery, such as transport in the circulatory system and drug movement through cells and tissues; they have also contributed to the development several new modes of drug delivery that have entered clinical practice. Yet, with all of this progress, many drugs, even those discovered using the most advanced molecular biology strategies, have unacceptable side effects due to the drug interacting with healthy tissues that are not the target of the drug. Side effects limit our ability to design optimal medications for
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