Polimery w Medycynie / Polymers in Medicine

24/01/2025

14th International Conference Psychogeriatry 2025 – State of the Artwill be held on March 7–8, 2025, in Wrocław, Poland.

TOPICS of the 14th International Conference on „Psychogeriatry 2025. Current status” are an overview of current pathogenetic concepts and the possibilities of therapy for various diseases occurring in elderly. In addition, it evaluates support systems for seniors and outlines the trends in the development of modern psychogeriatrics for the coming years.

MAIN OBJECTIVE of the conference is to point to the dynamic development of psychogeriatry, interdisciplinary knowledge, which uses modern research tools and whose development, also in Poland in the context of an aging society, should be significantly noticeable. Congress will brings together experts from multiple disciplines in the fields of geriatric and mental healthcare from around the world and will enable the exchange of experiences.

PREDICTED EFFECTS are breaking the stereotypical way of thinking both in relation to psychogeriatry itself as well as in the process of solving current and anticipating future research problems, exchange of scientific experiences and dissemination of science in the international national environment. Participation in the conference of outstanding and recognized experts from Poland as well as from European and non-European countries guarantees a high substantive level of lectures presented. It will also facilitate the establishment of valuable professional contacts and international scientific cooperation.



Conference participants are an all-star ensemble – among them one can find:

Prof. Shinya Yamanaka (Kyoto, Japan) – Nobel Prize Laureat in Medicine and Physiology (2012);
well-known researchers from the USA – Prof. Khalid Iqbal (New York State Institute for Basic Research in Developmental Disabilities, Staten Island, New York), Prof. Michał Toborek (Miller School of Medicine, University of Miami) and Prof. Breno S. Diniz (University of Connecticut Health Center (UConn Health) and UConn Center on Aging);
Prof. Birendra Nath Mallick – Indian neurobiologist and a professor of neurobiology at the School of Life Sciences of Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India;
Prof. Carlos de Mendonca Lima (Chair of the World Psychiatric Association (WPA) Section of Old Age Psychiatry);
Prof. Gabriela Stoppe (Chair of the WPA Section of Old Age Psychiatry);
Prof. Barbara Schneider (Landschaftsverband Rheinland (LVR) College in Cologne, Germany);
Prof. László Vécsei (University of Szeged, Hungary).

More information:

https://psychogeriatria2025.pl/?lang=en

20/01/2025

PROSPERO – a registry for protocols of systematic reviews

We strongly encourage authors of systematic reviews to register their detailed protocols before data extraction commences, in a public registry such as PROSPERO (https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/). The number obtained during the registration should be provided in the submitted paper – both in the Materials and Methods section and at the end of the main body of the manuscript – using the following disclaimer:

This systematic review has been registered in the PROSPERO registry under No. [NUMBER PROVIDED BY PROSPERO].

More information about PROSPERO here:

https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/documents/Registering%20a%20review%20on%20PROSPERO.pdf

Prospective registration of systematic reviews promotes transparency, helps reduce potential for bias and serves to avoid unintended duplication of reviews. A single point of access to information about ongoing reviews should also help avoid the unintended duplication of reviews and wasting of resources, a consideration that is more important than ever in the current economic climate.

Registration allows researchers to comply with PRISMA and provides a permanent public record of their planned methods. It may also help raise awareness of their review. Use of the unique registration number may be useful in helping track subsequent use or citation of the review to monitor its impact.

Commissioning and funding organizations can utilize PROSPERO to identify ongoing and unpublished reviews to help them avoid unplanned duplication and waste of financial resources.

Guideline developers could use information about forthcoming reviews to assist in the planning and timing of guideline development.

Peer reviewers will be able to link a manuscript to the corresponding registration record (and, where available, through to the full protocol). The registration record and/or the protocol may provide important additional information about, and clarity regarding, the methods that are absent from the manuscript. It could also speed the process because some issues of clarification that would otherwise be sent back to the authors as questions could be resolved by checking the registration record or protocol, thereby circumventing a round of question-and-response between reviewers, journal editors and authors.

Given that an underlying aim of registration is to help ensure that health and social care decisions are informed by good-quality systematic review evidence, registration is also in the public interest. As many systematic reviews are funded by the public purse, helping to avoid wasting money on unintended duplication should also be welcomed.

17/01/2025

The 7 most common types of research misconduct

Discover rising forms of fraud in research and the tools we’re developing to combat them.

13/01/2025

Scientific misconduct is the violation of the standard codes of scholarly conduct and ethical behavior in the publication of professional scientific research. It is violation of scientific integrity: violation of the scientific method and of research ethics in science, including in the design, conduct, and reporting of research.

A Lancet review on Handling of Scientific Misconduct in Scandinavian countries provides the following sample definitions, reproduced in The COPE report 1999:

Danish definition: "Intention or gross negligence leading to fabrication of the scientific message or a false credit or emphasis given to a scientist"
Swedish definition: "Intention[al] distortion of the research process by fabrication of data, text, hypothesis, or methods from another researcher's manuscript form or publication; or distortion of the research process in other ways."
The consequences of scientific misconduct can be damaging for perpetrators and journal audience and for any individual who exposes it. In addition there are public health implications attached to the promotion of medical or other interventions based on false or fabricated research findings. Scientific misconduct can result in loss of public trust in the integrity of science.

Three percent of the 3,475 research institutions that report to the US Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Research Integrity, indicate some form of scientific misconduct. However the ORI will only investigate allegations of impropriety where research was funded by federal grants. They routinely monitor such research publications for red flags and their investigation is subject to a statute of limitations. Other private organizations like the Committee of Medical Journal Editors (COJE) can only police their own members.

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/research-and-innovation/research-office/research-governance-and-integrity/research-integrity/what-is-research-integrity/what-is-research-misconduct/

10/01/2025

EndNote and references

If you use EndNote software to manage your references, you can format them automatically into our required reference format (AMA citation style) using this file.

Download the style file.
Double-click the style file. It should open in EndNote.
In EndNote, go to “File Menu” and choose “Save As”. Replace the word “copy” with your style’s name and click “Save”.
Click on “File Menu” and choose “Close Style”.

06/01/2025

Monthly editorial duty hour

Once a month our Managing Editor, Marek Misiak, is awaiting you at a Google Meets meeting. He will answer all your questions and clarify problematic issues.
The meeting take place on the first Thursday of each month between 9:30 and 10:30 CET. You can enter the meeting using the following URL:

meet.google.com/dqi-kzsz-fga

The only prerequisite is a Google account – without it you will not be able to log in to the meeting.

03/01/2025

Altmetric in Polimery w Medycynie - Polymers in Medicine

We’ve chosen to embed Altmetric Badges on our publications to help authors track the attention their research is receiving. By tracking unique identifiers such as DOIs, Altmetric collects article-level metrics and online conversations around articles published in Polim Med. Online mentions that contain links to the abstract landing page are picked up and collated, and the result is the Altmetric Attention Score and Badge.

You will find the Altmetric Badge at the top of each article’s page. When you click on the Altmetric Badge, you will be directed to the Altmetric Details Page, which will show you every mention for your article across Twitter, blogs, mass media outlets, Facebook, and more. View this video for an overview of the Altmetric Details Page.

Why use Altmetric?
Altmetrics can be useful to researchers who are keen on (1) building their online presence, (2) demonstrating the broader impact of their work, and (3) communicating the story of their research to grant review committees and panels. To leverage this information, consider using Altmetric data to:

Identify coverage and wider dissemination of your research to use as evidence in CVs or funding applications;
View who is talking about your research, and identify potential new collaborators and build relationships with key influencers;
Monitor other research in your field and see how it has been received by a broader audience;
Manage your online reputation, and actively engage with comments and conversation about your work.

MORE INFORMATION:
https://altmetric.figshare.com/articles/online_resource/Badges_Toolkit_Details_Page_Guide/20032118?backTo=/collections/Badges_Toolkit/6036803

01/01/2025

Ella Wheeler Wilcox
The Year

What can be said in New Year rhymes,
That’s not been said a thousand times?

The new years come, the old years go,
We know we dream, we dream we know.

We rise up laughing with the light,
We lie down weeping with the night.

We hug the world until it stings,
We curse it then and sigh for wings.

We live, we love, we woo, we wed,
We wreathe our prides, we sheet our dead.

We laugh, we weep, we hope, we fear,
And that’s the burden of a year.

31/12/2024

We are happy to announce that the 2/2024 issue of Polimery w Medycynie – Polymers in Medicine has been published on our website 🙂 It will be distributed also through our mailing list, but please help us by promoting in by any means available to you (mailing, social media etc.).

https://polimery.umw.edu.pl/en/issue/2024/54/2/

27/12/2024

Ahead of print

A review on recent advances in the stability study of anti-mycobacterial drugs

Several factors, including characteristic polymer composition of the cell wall, based on peptidoglycans cross-linked with arabinogalactans, together with the lipid layer contribute to the high resistance of Mycobacterium tuberculosis to antibiotics and other anti-tuberculosis drugs, leading to the development of new treatment methods. Implementation of therapeutic drug monitoring for anti-mycobacterial drugs in routine clinical practice requires understanding of the limited stability of these drugs. Rifampicin and isoniazid are the main anti-tuberculosis drugs that generate degradation products during sample handling and storage. Therefore, analytical methods used for analysis of clinical samples collected from tuberculosis patients treated with a combination of different drugs should enable the separation of the studied analytes from their metabolites and degradation products. Moreover, the samples require strictly regulated collection and storage conditions to prevent degradation processes.
The purpose of this review was to present recent data on the stability studies of anti-mycobacterial drugs, specifically used as first-line treatment in patients with tuberculosis. Detailed degradation pathway of rifampicin was described, including conditions influencing the formation of specific rifampicin related substances. Moreover, the results of the stability studies of anti-mycobacterial drugs were presented in various matrices in conditions determined by international guidance such as U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) or International Council for Harmonisation (ICH) guidelines. Particular attention was given to analytical methods designed for analysis of anti-mycobacterial drugs in the presence of their degradation products. Finally, recommendations proposed by different authors for collection, processing and storage of clinical samples to increase stability of anti-mycobacterial drugs were summarized.

https://polimery.umw.edu.pl/en/ahead-of-print/196615/

26/12/2024

24/12/2024

All knowledge attains its ethical value and its human significance only by the human sense in which it is employed. Only a good man can be a great physician.
Hermann Nothnagel (1841–1905)

In a world increasingly torn by wars and national egoisms, in which “multipolarity” sometimes means simply hostile blocs of states, we must remember that like in many cultures people meet during Christmas/Winter Holidays around a table or a tree, doctors and medical researchers also can meet around the idea of helping other people and advancing the humanity in general. In the deepest sense, medicine has no nationality – even if it stems from a certain culture (like Traditional Chinese Medicine), it nevertheless aims to cure or at least alleviate diseases in all people. The Editorial Board of Polimery w Medycynie - Polymers Medicine wishes you strong, deeply rooted belief that your work is vital – not even in a torn world, but especially in it.

Robert Frost
Christmas Trees

The city had withdrawn into itself
And left at last the country to the country;
When between whirls of snow not come to lie
And whirls of foliage not yet laid, there drove
A stranger to our yard, who looked the city,
Yet did in country fashion in that there
He sat and waited till he drew us out
A-buttoning coats to ask him who he was.
He proved to be the city come again
To look for something it had left behind
And could not do without and keep its Christmas.
He asked if I would sell my Christmas trees;
My woods—the young fir balsams like a place
Where houses all are churches and have spires.
I hadn’t thought of them as Christmas Trees.
I doubt if I was tempted for a moment
To sell them off their feet to go in cars
And leave the slope behind the house all bare,
Where the sun shines now no warmer than the moon.
I’d hate to have them know it if I was.
Yet more I’d hate to hold my trees except
As others hold theirs or refuse for them,
Beyond the time of profitable growth,
The trial by market everything must come to.
I dallied so much with the thought of selling.
Then whether from mistaken courtesy
And fear of seeming short of speech, or whether
From hope of hearing good of what was mine, I said,
“There aren’t enough to be worthwhile.”
“I could soon tell how many they would cut,
You let me look them over.”

“You could look.
But don’t expect I’m going to let you have them.”
Pasture they spring in, some in clumps too close
That lop each other of boughs, but not a few
Quite solitary and having equal boughs
All round and round. The latter he nodded “Yes” to,
Or paused to say beneath some lovelier one,
With a buyer’s moderation, “That would do.”
I thought so too, but wasn’t there to say so.
We climbed the pasture on the south, crossed over,
And came down on the north. He said, “A thousand.”

“A thousand Christmas trees!—at what apiece?”

He felt some need of softening that to me:
“A thousand trees would come to thirty dollars.”

Then I was certain I had never meant
To let him have them. Never show surprise!
But thirty dollars seemed so small beside
The extent of pasture I should strip, three cents
(For that was all they figured out apiece),
Three cents so small beside the dollar friends
I should be writing to within the hour
Would pay in cities for good trees like those,
Regular vestry-trees whole Sunday Schools
Could hang enough on to pick off enough.
A thousand Christmas trees I didn’t know I had!
Worth three cents more to give away than sell,
As may be shown by a simple calculation.
Too bad I couldn’t lay one in a letter.
I can’t help wishing I could send you one,
In wishing you herewith a Merry Christmas.

[source: The Poetry of Robert Frost: The Collected Poems, Complete and Unabridged. New York: Henry Holt and Co.; 1979]

23/12/2024

Ahead of print

A review on methods for the production of microcapsules and their application in drug and food technology

Microencapsulation is a technology for encapsulating particles in a coating designed to isolate the core substance from external conditions, including oxidation, UV radiation or humidity. Microcapsules reach dimensions of up to 5,000 μm. In the pharmaceutical industry, they are used for the controlled release of active substances, masking their taste, odor or gastrointestinal irritation, and can also reduce the toxicity of some medicinal substances. In the food production industry, the encapsulation process applies to sweeteners, enzymes, microorganisms, vitamins and minerals, flavors, or colors. The production of microcapsules is based on the use of their physical properties such as amphiphilicity, partition coefficient and melting point, while their formation of microcapsules is mainly carried out using physical methods such as coacervation, spray drying, cooling and coating, agglomeration, suspension crosslinking, solvent evaporation, and extrusion, as well as chemical methods: interfacial polymerization and in situ polymerization. Although traditional methods are still used to produce microcapsules, contemporary methods employing the latest technology are also emerging. One such method is encapsulation in microcylinders produced with a 3D printer.

https://polimery.umw.edu.pl/en/ahead-of-print/196538/

20/12/2024

Ahead of print

Anti-acne preparations containing tetracycline, azelaic acid and azeloglycine: Optimization of stability and physicochemical properties

Acne vulgaris is a common inflammatory skin condition affecting almost 85% of the adolescent and young adult population. The etiopathogenesis of this dermatosis involves an imbalance in the skin microbiome, leading to inflammation of both the skin and hair follicles.
The aim of this study was to develop topical anti-acne formulations with increased therapeutic efficacy and reduced risk of developing antibiotic resistance. Six hydrogel formulations containing azelaic acid or its derivative, azeloglycine, in combination with tetracycline hydrochloride were prepared as part of the study.

https://polimery.umw.edu.pl/en/ahead-of-print/196256/

18/12/2024

Ahead of print

Behavior of PGS/apatite foam scaffolds during incubation in SBF, PBS, Ringer’s solution, artificial saliva, and distilled water

Poly(glycerol sebacate) is a polymeric material with potential biomedical application in the field of tissue engineering. In order to act as a biodegradable scaffold, its incubation study is vital to simulate its behavior.
This study explores the degradation of porous poly(glycerol sebacate)/hydroxyapatite scaffolds subjected to incubation in various physiological solutions.

https://polimery.umw.edu.pl/en/ahead-of-print/196496/

16/12/2024

New CiteScore Tracker

Our CiteScore Tracker has increased from 4.0 to 4.3!

CiteScore Tracker follows how the current year’s CiteScore is building month by month, eliminating the need to wait until mid-year to see how a journal performed in the prior year. As new citations are received each month, the metric builds up, so you can get a more up-to-date look at the performance of the journal.

13/12/2024

Ahead of print

High-filler content electrospun fibers from biodegradable polymers and hydroxyapatite: Toward improved scaffolds for tissue engineering

One of the key challenges in tissue engineering area is the creation of biocompatible scaffolds that support cell growth and mimic the structural and mechanical properties of native tissues. Among various materials used for scaffold fabrication, composite materials based on biodegradable polymers reinforced with bioactive inorganic fillers have attracted significant attention due to their properties. One of the important problems with the preparation of composite electrospun fibers is the low filler content in the fiber.
This study aims to select the best composition for electrospun polymer fibers in terms of potential application in tissue engineering. The effect of the viscosity of polymer solution/dispersion and filler content on the structure and properties of the fibers was determined. Morphology and filler content were compared.

https://polimery.umw.edu.pl/en/ahead-of-print/196351/