An-Najah National University

About: An-Najah National University is a education organization based out in Nablus, Palestinian Territory. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Adsorption. The organization has 1857 authors who have published 2607 publications receiving 68226 citations. The organization is also known as: An Najah National University.

Quality Indicators of Pharmaceutical Care for Integrative Healthcare: A Scoping Review of Indicators Developed Using the Delphi Technique.

Abstract: Background Recently, measuring and benchmarking provision of healthcare services has drawn a considerable attention. This scoping review was conducted to identify, describe, and summarize studies in which the Delphi technique was used to develop quality indicators of pharmaceutical care. The study also aimed to identify activities and services that could be used to capture the impact of pharmacist in integrative medicine. Methods Databases were searched from inception to February 2020 using key terms that were combined using Boolean operators. Studies were included if they were relevant to development of quality indicators of pharmaceutical care with regard to medications or complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) modalities. Full text of the selected studies was imported into EndNote. Studies were screened and data were extracted into a standard extraction form. Results Data were extracted from 31 studies. Of those, 24 (77.4%) were related to provision of pharmaceutical services relevant to medications and 7 (22.6%) were related to provision of care using CAM modalities. Most of the studies (67.7%) were published in 2010 and beyond. Almost half of the studies (48.4%) originated from the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada. A total of 42 different activities and services that could be used as quality indicators were identified from the studies included in this review. Activities and services were related to history taking, performing reconciliations, identifying and resolving therapy problems, providing collaborative care, designing care plans, optimal performance, and continuing education. Conclusions Although there is an increasing interest in improving healthcare delivery, quality indicators of pharmaceutical services and those relevant to CAM provision in healthcare facilities adopting the integrated healthcare paradigm are still limited. Future studies are needed to develop validated quality indicators that could be successfully used in measuring and benchmarking quality of services in integrated healthcare facilities.

Smart on-board transportation management system Geo-Casting featured

Abstract: Recently, many applications have been defined in order to track, monitor and notify vehicles either online or offline, in this work we focus on notifying subset of the vehicles based on their geographical location; such feature is called Geo- Casting, which is the process by which a traffic accident is automatically detected and relayed to the nearest hospital or health center, police station as well as to all vehicles in geographical proximity. In this paper, we study application layer solutions handling Geo-Casting feature as an additive value to vehicles' Smart on-Board Unit (SBU). Moreover, we provide a SBU design that integrates this feature, also we report fully functional end-to-end system implementation including the proposed SBU module and web based application meeting the functional requirements of Geo-Casting.

Propionic acid counteracts the inflammation of human subcutaneous adipose tissue: a new avenue for drug development.

Abstract: Adipose tissue is a primary site of obesity-induced inflammation, which has been emerging as an important contributor to obesity associated disorders. The factors influencing adipose tissue-induced inflammation and the resulting pathophysiological events remain poorly understood. However, dietary fiber consumptions appear to be protective. Short-chain fatty acids such as propionic acid (PA) are the principal products of the dietary fiber fermentation by microbiota. Therefore, we aim to investigate the influence of PA on inflammation, lipogenesis and glucose uptake markers from human subcutaneous adipose tissue (SAT). We showed that the treatment of SAT with PA resulted in a significant downregulation of inflammatory parameters (e.g. TNF-α and IP-10) and macrophage markers (e.g. CD163 and MMP-9). The expression levels of PA receptors (i.e. G protein coupled receptor-41 and -43) in human primary adipocytes were very low in comparison with SAT and macrophages. Upon PA treatment, no anti-inflammatory effect was observed in human adipocytes. PA significantly upregulated the expression of lipoprotein lipase (LPL), sterol regulatory-element-binding protein-1c (SREBP-1c) and glucose transporter 4 (GLUT-4), which are associated with lipogenesis and glucose uptake. We also showed that the observed anti-inflammatory effects of PA on SAT were partly mediated by Gi/o protein coupled receptor. Our data suggests that PA anti-inflammatory effects on SAT are mediated partly via Gi/o proteins, leading to the improved expression of factors associated with lipogenesis and glucose uptake. These responses appeared to be not mediated by adipocytes; but most probably by macrophages. The current study provides new knowledge, which can be used as a potential new avenue for drug development in preventing obesity-related inflammation and metabolic disorders in future. [Figure not available: see fulltext.].