Search Results (43,580)

Life expectancy (LE) varies widely across Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) countries, reflecting differences in economic, social, environmental, and health-system conditions. This review aimed to synthesize quantitative evidence on determinants of LE at birth in OIC member countries. The study was conducted in accordance with the PRISMA guidelines, and a systematic search of electronic databases was performed up to September 2025. After screening 5312 records and assessing full texts, studies were appraised using the Joanna Briggs Institute checklists, with an inclusion threshold of ≥80%. A total of 54 studies, mainly ecological, time-series, and panel analyses using national-level data, were included. Higher gross domestic product per capita, education, employment, and health expenditure were consistently associated with longer LE. In contrast, poverty, income inequality, air pollution, and carbon dioxide emissions were associated with shorter LE. Clear differences were observed across World Bank income groups, with LE being lowest in low-income OIC countries and highest in high-income Gulf Cooperation Council states, where gains were driven more by health-system resources than by income growth. Improving LE in OIC countries requires integrated economic, social, environmental, and health-system policies. Full article

This narrative review examines topical anti-inflammatory therapies in veterinary medicine through the lens of the One Health framework, integrating pharmacology, dermatology, ecotoxicology, food safety, and regulatory science. It discusses the interconnected roles of veterinarians, pharmacists, environmental scientists, public health authorities, and regulatory bodies in addressing antimicrobial resistance, environmental contamination, zoonotic transmission, and drug residues in food-producing animals. By emphasising cross-sector collaboration, the review highlights how coordinated strategies can enhance animal welfare, safeguard human health, and reduce ecological burden. The article analyses inflammatory conditions in companion and farm animals and compares systemic versus topical anti-inflammatory approaches. Particular attention is given to corticosteroids, NSAIDs, immunomodulators, pro-resolving lipid mediators, and plant-derived bioactives, alongside advances in vehicles such as lipid nanocarriers and biodegradable film-forming systems designed to minimise systemic absorption and environmental dispersion. Regulatory considerations, residue control, pharmacovigilance gaps, and sustainability-oriented formulation strategies are critically addressed. Topical anti-inflammatory therapies, when rationally designed and monitored under One Health principles, represent a strategic opportunity to improve therapeutic precision while limiting systemic toxicity and ecological impact. Future directions should prioritise translational research, eco-compatible formulation design, and harmonised regulatory frameworks. Full article

Objective: This study aimed to evaluate the health-related quality of life (HRQoL) of informal caregivers providing primary care to elderly chronically ill patients receiving home health care services in Türkiye and to identify patient and caregiver characteristics independently associated with HRQoL. Methods: This cross-sectional study included 499 patient–caregiver dyads enrolled in home health care services at a training and research hospital in İzmir, Türkiye. Data were collected through face-to-face interviews using a sociodemographic questionnaire, the Palliative Performance Scale (PPS), and the Short Form 36 (SF-36). One-sample t-tests compared SF-36 scores with Turkish normative values. Multivariate linear regression identified independent predictors of the Physical Component Summary (PCS) and Mental Component Summary (MCS) scores. Results: Caregivers scored significantly lower than population norms across all SF-36 subdimensions (p < 0.001), with the largest impairments in Role Physical (mean difference: −53.0) and Role Emotional (−42.9). In multivariate analyses, independent predictors of poorer physical health (PCS) were severe patient functional dependence (PPS ≤ 30: β = −0.260, p < 0.001), older caregiver age (≥65 years: β = −0.089, p = 0.044), unemployment (β = −0.118, p = 0.014), additional care recipients (β = −0.095, p = 0.026), and caregiver’s own chronic illness (β = −0.169, p < 0.001). Poorer mental health (MCS) was independently associated with caregiver’s own chronic illness (β = −0.138, p = 0.002), receipt of caregiving payment (β = −0.137, p = 0.004), and university-level education (β = −0.108, p = 0.040), whereas the presence of a support person was protective (β = 0.096, p = 0.038). Conclusions: Informal caregivers of home health care-dependent elderly patients experience significantly reduced quality of life across all health domains compared with the general population. The independent determinants of caregiver health are multidimensional, encompassing patient-related factors, socioeconomic characteristics, and psychosocial resources. These findings underscore the urgent need for health systems to implement tailored interventions that address the distinct physical and mental health needs of caregivers, with particular attention to those who are elderly, chronically ill, socioeconomically disadvantaged, or highly educated. Full article

The growing complexity of human systems and the increasing frequency of climate-driven hazards have transformed some disasters from isolated events into cascading phenomena which propagate through critical infrastructure networks, disrupting essential services and amplifying systemic risk. This work examines the impacts of extreme storms and subsequent flooding on critical entities as defined under the new EU Directive (Critical Entities Resilience, CER). This study introduces a structured Critical Entities Disruption Database—Greece (CEDD-GR), as a methodological framework for systematically recording and analysing disruptions to critical entities, and applies it to the case of Storm Daniel (2023), one of the most severe flood events recorded in Greece. The analysis identified direct impacts across eight of the eleven sectors defined in the CER Directive, namely, energy, transport, health, drinking water, wastewater, public administration, digital infrastructure and food production, processing and distribution. A total of 21 different types of critical entities were documented, revealing the mechanisms through which failures affected different subsectors. The results underscore the systemic fragility of critical entities when exposed to extreme storms, compound flooding, and mass wasting processes (landslides, ground subsidence) and highlight the need for integrated resilience planning in line with the CER framework. Full article

Mercury (Hg) decontamination in active and decommissioned mining areas is a difficult task since Hg may affect environmental matrices and man-made materials. Despite its toxicity as an inorganic form being rather limited with respect to organic compounds (e.g., methyl-Hg), severe effects to human health and ecosystems are recognized. In this work, we review the geochemical activities carried out in the last 13 years at the Abbadia San Salvatore (AbSS) mining and production area. This site belongs to Mt. Amiata (Tuscany, central Italy), which is considered the third-largest Hg-district in the world. Air, water, soil and man-made materials within the AbSS area were investigated to verify to what extent such matrices were affected by Hg contamination. The geochemical investigations are used as important tools to proceed with specific remediation operations of edifices, mining structures and machineries as well as the local groundwater system. To the best of our knowledge, restoration of decommissioned areas affected by Hg contamination at a large scale, such as the AbSS exploitation and production site, is rather uncommon. Currently, the remediation activities in the AbSS area are going on and they are expected to be concluded at the end of 2026 or the beginning of 2027, when the former mining area will turn into a public archeometallurgical museum. Full article

Air pollution caused by fine particulate matter (PM_2.5) poses a serious public health threat in many South Asian megacities where monitoring networks remain limited. Lahore, Pakistan—frequently ranked among the world’s most polluted cities—still lacks reliable short-term PM_2.5 forecasting systems. This study develops a performance-weighted ensemble machine learning framework that integrates satellite observations, meteorological reanalysis data, and ground monitoring measurements to improve daily PM_2.5 prediction. Eleven predictor variables were processed using a unified Google Earth Engine pipeline, including MODIS aerosol optical depth, Sentinel-5P trace gases (CO, NO₂, SO₂), and ERA5 meteorological parameters. Four tree-based machine learning algorithms—Random Forest, XGBoost, LightGBM, and CatBoost—were trained using daily observations from 2019 to 2023. Model evaluation using an independent 2024 dataset showed strong predictive capability, with Random Forest achieving R² = 0.77 (RMSE = 24.75 µg m⁻³), XGBoost R² = 0.76 (RMSE = 26.32 µg m⁻³), CatBoost R² = 0.73 (RMSE = 30.39 µg m⁻³), and LightGBM R² = 0.70 (RMSE = 32.75 µg m⁻³). To further enhance performance, the best models were combined into a weighted ensemble (RF 0.5, XGBoost 0.3, and CatBoost 0.2), which produced the highest validation accuracy (R² = 0.77; RMSE = 23.37 µg m⁻³). Statistical testing using paired t-tests and Diebold–Mariano tests confirmed that the ensemble significantly reduced forecast errors compared with individual models. Feature importance analysis revealed that surface pressure, temperature, CO, and NO₂ were the most influential predictors of PM_2.5 variability. The proposed framework demonstrates that combining satellite data, reanalysis meteorology, and ground observations through ensemble learning can provide accurate and scalable air quality forecasting for data-limited urban environments. Full article

Hearing loss is detrimental to human health, and currently, more than 1.5 billion people are affected by hearing loss. Active military personnel and construction workers are examples of individuals in the workplace who are exposed to loud noise and are at serious risk of hearing loss. While there is currently no therapy for hearing loss, evidence supports investigating the enhancement of the Medial Olivocochlear (MOC) System, an efferent pathway for hearing that serves as a gain-control for hearing loss protection. Selectively modulating the α9α10 nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (nAChRs) found within this pathway is promising for the development of a new drug class. In this review article, we present the most current findings related to the therapeutic targeting of α9α10 nAChRs for hearing loss. We discuss the loss- or gain-of-function of the receptor, evaluate the known modulators of the receptor, examine their clinical relevance, and discuss their chemical and physical properties. Investigation of this novel pathway may aid in the development of a therapeutic for hearing loss. Full article

Over the past years, burn care has evolved from a discipline focused on survival to one centered on restoring long-term health, function, and quality of life. Significant advances in critical care, early excision and grafting, infection control, and metabolic support have transformed survival outcomes for even the most severe injuries. As a result, the field now faces a new frontier: understanding and managing the long-term physical, psychological, and systemic sequelae of survival. This review traces the evolution of burn care over the last century and outlines the challenges and priorities for the next 25 years. The first era of progress, defined by innovations in resuscitation, surgery, and critical care, has given rise to a growing cohort of long-term survivors. Research over the past decade has revealed that major burns induce chronic multisystem alterations, including metabolic, cardiovascular, neurocognitive, and immunological dysfunctions. Emerging concepts such as burn-associated heart failure exemplify this shift from acute to chronic disease understanding. Looking ahead, the future of burn medicine lies in personalized and lifelong care, supported by translational research, digital health, regenerative therapies, and interdisciplinary collaboration. Overall, burn care stands at a pivotal crossroads. By integrating precision medicine, rehabilitation science, and psychosocial care, we aim to move the field from survival toward sustained, holistic recovery over the next 25 years. Full article

Soil contamination in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is increasingly driven by rapid industrialization, intensive agriculture, mining activities, and urban expansion, posing significant risks to food safety, ecosystem services, and human livelihoods. Despite the growing scale of the problem, low-cost, locally adaptable remediation technologies are widely available and technically feasible within the region. Organic waste and waste-derived products—such as compost, manure, biochar, vermicompost, digestate, and agro-industrial residues—have emerged as sustainable and cost-effective amendments for the remediation of contaminated soils. These materials can immobilize heavy metals, enhance the microbial degradation of organic pollutants, and improve soil health, making them especially suitable for resource-constrained settings. This review synthesizes the current knowledge on the use of organic waste-based remediation approaches in SSA, highlighting technologies already applied at the laboratory, pilot, and field scales, as well as their effectiveness across different contaminant types. However, despite their demonstrated potential, their widespread adoption remains limited. The primary challenge is not the absence of affordable solutions, but rather the systemic constraints characteristic of many SSA countries, including limited technical capacity, weak policy and regulatory frameworks, low stakeholder awareness, and insufficient financial and institutional support for large-scale implementation. To enable broader uptake, there is a need to strengthen waste segregation and treatment systems, standardize composting and pyrolysis processes, and develop robust regulatory guidelines and certification schemes. Investments in monitoring infrastructure, practitioner training, and knowledge transfer mechanisms will also be critical to translating scientific advances into scalable, field-ready solutions for sustainable soil remediation in SSA. Full article

The rapid growth of the elderly population worldwide demands reliable activity recognition technologies to support independent living and continuous health supervision. However, conventional wearable sensor-based human activity recognition (HAR) techniques often fail to capture the complex temporal behaviour and subtle motion patterns characteristic of the elderly. To address these limitations, this study introduces a hybrid deep residual architecture—CNN-CBAM-BiGRU—that integrates convolutional neural networks (CNNs), the convolutional block attention module (CBAM), and bidirectional gated recurrent units (BiGRUs) to improve activity recognition using inertial measurement unit (IMU) data. In the proposed CNN-CBAM-BiGRU framework, CNN layers automatically derive representative features from raw sensor signals, CBAM applies adaptive channel and spatial attention to highlight informative patterns, and BiGRU captures long-range temporal relationships within activity sequences. The approach was evaluated on three benchmark datasets designed for elderly populations—HAR70+, HARTH, and SisFall—covering daily activities and fall events. The proposed model consistently outperforms existing methods across all datasets, achieving accuracies exceeding 96%, F1-scores above 93%, and a fall detection recall of 93.74%, confirming its robustness and suitability for safety-critical monitoring applications. Class-level evaluation indicates excellent recognition of static postures and consistent performance for dynamic actions. Convergence analysis further confirms efficient learning with limited overfitting across datasets. The proposed framework thus provides a robust and accurate solution for wearable-based elderly activity recognition, with strong potential for deployment in fall detection, health monitoring, and ambient assisted living systems. Full article

Neuropsychiatric conditions constitute a major and growing global health burden, with prevalence rates that continue to rise worldwide. Although these disorders have traditionally been studied primarily from a neuronal perspective, accumulating evidence indicates that immune dysregulation and inflammatory processes play a central role in their pathophysiology. In this review, we advance the hypothesis that nitric oxide (NO)-mediated alterations in blood–brain barrier (BBB) integrity represent a critical mechanistic link between inflammation and central nervous system dysfunction in neuropsychiatric disorders. NO is a gaseous multifunctional signaling molecule involved in vascular homeostasis and immune responses, and its dysregulated production, together with aberrant protein S-nitrosylation, has been implicated in several neuropsychiatric conditions. However, the specific mechanisms by which NO signaling contributes to BBB dysfunction remain incompletely defined. Here, we synthesize current evidence supporting a role for NO-dependent vascular and inflammatory pathways in BBB disruption and discuss how these processes may contribute to the onset and progression of neuropsychiatric conditions. Clarifying these mechanisms may provide novel insights into disease pathogenesis and identify therapeutic targets aimed at preserving BBB integrity and limiting neuroinflammation. Full article

Chronic diseases drive healthcare costs, and employers seek scalable strategies to improve health outcomes and control expenses. Telehealth behavioral care shows promise for managing chronic conditions, but its long-term economic value in employer populations is still unclear. We assessed the cost-effectiveness and ROI of a behavioral care (LBC) model using a Markov model in a custom analytic tool. The model simulated disease progression, healthcare utilization, and QALYs over five years from the employer perspective. Transition probabilities, costs, and mortality risks were obtained from the InHealth program, national sources, and published literature. Employees in the behavioral care model were compared with a control group receiving usual care. Among 4461 employees aged 40, intervention participants had five-year costs of $41,431, versus $47,834 for controls, saving $6403 per member and $28.6 million overall. Treated members gained 4.7 QALYs compared to 4.6 in controls, equivalent to 36.5 extra days of full health. The program had a ROI of 6.53, showing significant cost savings. Telehealth behavioral care is a cost-effective way to improve health outcomes and provide financial benefits to employers. These results support incorporating behavioral care into value-based benefits and highlight potential long-term savings through prevention and management of lifestyle-related chronic diseases. Full article

Smart feedlots are increasingly adopting Precision Livestock Farming technologies to enable continuous, individual-animal monitoring and more proactive management in intensive beef production systems. This narrative review synthesises evidence from approximately 350 academic publications, of which 117 are formally cited, complemented by industry deployments and the authors’ experience in smart feedlot system development. We cover enabling digital infrastructure (power, sensing networks, wireless connectivity, and gateways), animal identification and sensing (RFID, automated weighing, wearables, and pen-side sensors), machine vision (RGB, thermal, and multispectral imaging from fixed and mobile platforms), and AI-based analytics and decision support for health, welfare, performance, and environmental management. Across the literature, key components have progressed beyond proof-of-concept toward operation under commercial constraints. Reported outcomes include reduced reliance on routine pen-rider observation and yard handling, earlier triage of emerging morbidity risk and behavioural change, and more standardised welfare auditing. Vision-based methods are repeatedly validated against trained human scorers in both on-farm and abattoir contexts, while automated weighing and image-based liveweight estimation support higher-frequency growth monitoring with low single-digit percentage error in representative studies. Precision feeding and targeted supplementation are associated with improved feed utilisation and reduced resource wastage, although effectiveness and adoption vary across animal classes and production stages. We identify priorities for robust, scalable deployment: resilient communications in harsh environments, appropriate edge–cloud partitioning under intermittent connectivity, and interoperable multi-sensor data fusion to deliver trustworthy alerts and actionable insights. Persistent barriers remain cost, durability, maintenance burden, integration and interoperability, data governance, and workforce capability. Full article

Artificial sweeteners have emerged as contaminants of increasing concern due to their widespread consumption, environmental persistence, and resistance to conventional wastewater treatment. This review provides an integrated assessment of global research trends and the environmental behavior of major artificial sweeteners, including sucralose, acesulfame potassium, saccharin, and aspartame. Bibliometric analysis of SCOPUS-indexed publications reveals rapid growth in research since 2010, with key themes focusing on environmental occurrence, treatment technologies, and ecotoxicological effects. These compounds are frequently detected in wastewater effluents, surface waters, groundwater, and even drinking water systems, driven by their high solubility and limited biodegradability. Their persistence raises concerns regarding ecological impacts, including potential alterations to microbial communities and aquatic organisms. In addition, emerging evidence suggests potential human health implications, including gut microbiota disruption, metabolic effects, and risks associated with chronic low-dose exposure, although these remain poorly understood. The performance of existing treatment technologies, including biological processes, adsorption, advanced oxidation, and membrane filtration, is critically evaluated, highlighting limitations in complete removal and in the formation of transformation products. Future research should prioritize sustainable treatment strategies, comprehensive risk assessment, and improved monitoring frameworks to better address both environmental and human health risks associated with artificial sweeteners. Full article