This book discusses the organ-specific systemic manifestations of COVID-19. The initial chapters of the book review the origin and evolution of the coronaviruses, followed by pathogenesis and immune response during COVID-19 infection. The book also provides insight into the role of angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 in the onset of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pathogenesis. It summarizes the neurological aspects of SARS-CoV2, including transmission pathways, mechanisms of invasion into the nervous system, and mechanisms of neurological disease. It also delineates the association of severe disease with high blood plasma levels of inflammatory cytokines and inflammatory markers in SARS-CoV-2 infection. Lastly, it discusses the perturbation of gut microbiota by SARS-CoV-2 and uncovers the potential risk of virus infection on reproductive health.

A timely work describing how localized hospital-based health technology assessment (HB-HTA) complements general, ‘arms-length’ HTA agency efforts, and what has been the collective global impact of HB-HTA across the globe. While HB-HTA has gained significant momentum over the past few years, expertise in the field, and information on the operation and organization of HB-HTA, has been scattered. This book serves to bring this information together to inform those who are currently working in the field of HTA at the hospital, regional, national or global level. In addition, this book is intended for decision-makers and policy-makers with a stake in determining the uptake and decommissioning of new and established technologies in the hospital setting. HTA has traditionally been performed at the National/Regional level by HTA Agencies, typically linked to governments. Yet hospitals are the main entry door for most health technologies (HTs). Hospital decision-makers must undertake multiple high stakes investment and disinvestment decisions annually for innovative HTs, usually without adequate information. Despite the existence of arms-length HTA Agencies, inadequate information is available to hospital decision-makers either because relevant HTA reports are not yet released at the time of entry of new technologies to the field, or because even when the report exists, the information contained is insufficient to clarify the contextualized informational needs of hospital decision makers. Therefore, there has recently been a rising trend toward hospital-based HTA units and programs. These units/programs complement the work of National/Regional HTA Agencies by providing the key and relevant evidence needed by hospital decision makers in their specific hospital context, and within required decision-making timelines. The emergence of HB-HTA is creating a comprehensive HTA ecosystem across health care levels, which creates better bridges for knowledge translation through relevance and timeliness.

COVID-19: Current Challenges and Future Perspectives informs readers about the current status of knowledge on COVID-19 infection. The book begins by presenting basic information about the history, epidemiology, pathogenesis, diagnosis, treatment and preventive measures against COVID-19. The second part of the book contains information about the repurposing of drugs, herbal medicines, and immunotherapy against COVID-19 infections. Integrating both general and advanced information about Sars-cov-2, this book updates a wide range of readers including students, researchers (virologists, pharmacologists), health care professionals (physicians, nurses, pharmacists, paramedics) and the general public on novel coronaviruses and COVID-19.

In recent public workshops and working group meetings, the Forum on Microbial Threats of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) has examined a variety of infectious disease outbreaks with pandemic potential, including those caused by influenza (IOM, 2005) and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) (IOM, 2004). Particular attention has been paid to the potential pandemic threat posed by the H5N1 strain of avian influenza, which is now endemic in many Southeast Asian bird populations. Since 2003, the H5N1 subtype of avian influenza has caused 185 confirmed human deaths in 11 countries, including some cases of viral transmission from human to human (WHO, 2007). But as worrisome as these developments are, at least they are caused by known pathogens. The next pandemic could well be caused by the emergence of a microbe that is still unknown, much as happened in the 1980s with the emergence of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and in 2003 with the appearance of the SARS coronavirus. Previous Forum meetings on pandemic disease have discussed the scientific and logistical challenges associated with pandemic disease recognition, identification, and response. Participants in these earlier meetings also recognized the difficulty of implementing disease control strategies effectively. Ethical and Legal Considerations in Mitigating Pandemic Disease: Workshop Summary as a factual summary of what occurred at the workshop.

Mathematical modelling in biomedicine is a rapidly developing scientific discipline at the intersection of medicine, biology, mathematics, physics, and computer science. Its progress is stimulated by fundamental scientific questions and by the applications to public health. This book represents a collection of papers devoted to mathematical modelling of various physiological problems in normal and pathological conditions. It covers a broad range of topics including cardiovascular system and diseases, heart and brain modelling, tumor growth, viral infections, and immune response. Computational models of blood circulation are used to study the influence of heart arrhythmias on coronary blood flow and on operating modes for left-ventricle-assisted devices. Wave propagation in the cardiac tissue is investigated in order to show the influence of tissue heterogeneity and fibrosis. The models of tumor growth are used to determine optimal protocols of antiangiogenic and radiotherapy. The models of viral hepatitis kinetics are considered for the parameter identification, and the evolution of viral quasi-species is investigated. The book presents the state-of-the-art in mathematical modelling in biomedicine and opens new perspectives in this passionate field of research.

Dieses Fachbuch erläutert die molekularen Grundlagen von Entzündungen, spannt den Bogen zu Infektionskrankheiten und den Zusammenhang zwischen Entzündungen und chronischen Erkrankungen, behandelt abschließend den Heilungsprozess und zeigt Therapiemöglichkeiten.

What is it in human nature that leads us to label some as insiders and stigmatize others as outsiders?Sociologist Gerhard Falk examines the social psychology that motivates this process of exclusion, focusing on the outcasts in contemporary American society and comparing current experience with examples from the past. Referring to the work of Emile Durkheim and Erving Goffman, Falk reviews the whole range of stigmatized people from the mentally ill to ordinary people with unpopular occupations, like undertakers and trash collectors. Amid the wide diversity of stigmatized persons, he finds two basic types of outsiders: the "existential" and the "achieved." The first group comprises those who are stigmatized because of their very existence, regardless of their specific actions: the mentally handicapped, for example. The second group describes those whose actions or life conditions have resulted in stigma: from high achievers (often subject to resentment) to criminals. Falk also looks at the ways in which writers past and present have dramatized stigmatized characters in literature.This fascinating overview of a long-standing and widespread social problem will be of interest to all those concerned about creating a more fair-minded society.