Fixed-dose combination and therapeutic drug monitoring in tuberculosis: friend or foe?

Anticancer Drug — Friend or Foe

Antioxidants: Friend or foe for tuberculosis patients

Respiratory burst induced bacteria killing by oxidants are important mechanism of host defence. However, it is impaired in tuberculosis due to inhibition of respiratory burst by Mycobacterial factors. Antioxidants are compounds that cause chelation of reactive oxygen species. So, antioxidants are expected to play a negative role in the management of active tuberculosis. But, oxidative stress is...

Prescription Drug Formularies: Friend or Foe?

In the past 20 years, spending in all areas of health care has increased dramatically. In 1980, the national health expenditure per capita was $1,067. In 2000, our country spent $4,681 per person on health-care [6]. Expenditures on prescription drugs have played a major role in driving up our country’s health care costs, in fact, increasing at a rate twice as great as overall health care costs ...

Antioxidants - friend or foe?

Particularly in the field of advertising and in popular scientific journals, antioxidants such as β-carotene (from carrots) or lycopenes (from tomatoes) and the vitamins C and E are one-sidedly portrayed as substances capable of offering protection against cancer or ageing because they diminish or prevent the effects of free radicals. However, free radicals should by nomeans be considered as be...

Friend or foe

For many years, β-defensins were best known for their antimicrobial activity. However, β-defensins also exert immunomodulatory functions, such as the chemotactic recruitment of immune cells via chemokine receptors. We demonstrated that mouse β-defensin 14 recruits CCR6(+) B cells into fibrosarcomas, resulting in enhanced angiogenesis and tumor development.