Pharmacology

"During the past seven years, the international community – UNSMIL and UN member states – has been the main leading actor for the political and peace building process in Libya. However, all the important high level meetings initiated, mediated and facilitated by the UNSMIL or member states barely has included women"

"Women’s future is now, not tomorrow and not the day after. I promote peace at all levels, and I’m confident that women are able to very soon change the status quo in fields historically designated to men, such as peace building and conflict mediation"

"Ford’s vision made me recognize that every age has advantages, and we should learn how to get advantage of age difference"

"On the other hand, it also made me believe that whoever has the will to learn, love their career and be passionate about work, will succeed and reach goals, and become a good leader even at very young age"

"I always make sure that we – young and senior women – lead together"

"moreover, there are times when I gave steering wheel to young women and I set in the back seat, and results of their leadership has been tremendous"

"I am keen to enhance having resilient connections among senior and young members, through sharing responsibilities, knowledge, and perhaps memories either painful and hard – especially those related to the critical situation of Libya- or funny and nice ones, which are usually recalled from activities and retreats arranged for Together We Build It members, after all we are humans"

"Even if women are not part of the fights in Libya, we should be part of the solution"

"the international community showed a very gender-blind approach to the right of Libyan women to meaningfully participating in peace process"

"sends an explicit message to Libyan decision-makers that women’s participation in decision making and peace process is not necessary and not important"

"I was risking the lives of my husband and son, who had to go with me as guards in the taxi. We did not know what dangers we could find along the road"

"’s (AC) method is a pharmacotherapy-free approach to quit smoking that is delivered through seminars, online courses, or in the form of a book. It has gained popularity, but its effectiveness remains controversial due to a lack of scientific evidence."

"This variant plays essentially no role in whether an individual initiates smoking or not, which is strongly driven by environmental factors. However, if a person with the high-risk does begin smoking, they will smoke a higher number of s per day, have a higher intensity of smoking, and have a higher age of smoking cessation than those with the low-risk variant, increasing their risk for . The problem with smoking cessation pharmacotherapy using is that it works modestly, at best, and the vast majority of smoking cessation is done without any medication. However, data suggest that people with the high-risk variant rs16969968 have the greatest difficulty quitting and stand to benefit the most from medication, although the evidence is still controversial. This makes sense since this variant affects function. Improved implementation of pharmacotherapy, using patients’ genetics as a guide, could have a huge impact."

"Smoking increases mortality from all causes and has a crucial role in . Active smoking and exposure determine more than 30% of mortality. The exact mechanisms of cardiovascular damages are not well known, but the detrimental effect of smoking on endothelial function has long been recognized. Smoking elicits oxidative processes, negatively affects platelet function, , inflammation and vasomotor function; all these proatherogenic effects double the 10-year risk of fatal events in smokers compared to non smokers. An intriguing issue about smoking is the vulnerability of female gender. The mortality from cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) is higher in female than male smokers and female smokers show a 25% higher risk of developing CHD than men with the same exposure to tobacco smoke. This female vulnerability seems to be related to genes involved in thrombin signaling. The effects of smoking cessation have also been extensively studied. Cessation at an early age (40 years) has an impressive 90% reduction in the excess risk of death."

"There is high‐certainty evidence that can aid long‐term smoking cessation. However, bupropion also increases the number of adverse events, including psychiatric , and there is high‐certainty evidence that people taking bupropion are more likely to discontinue treatment compared with placebo. However, there is no clear evidence to suggest whether people taking bupropion experience more or fewer than those taking placebo (moderate certainty). also appears to have a beneficial effect on smoking quit rates relative to placebo. Evidence suggests that bupropion may be as successful as and nortriptyline in helping people to quit smoking, but that it is less effective than varenicline. There is insufficient evidence to determine whether the other antidepressants tested, such as s, aid smoking cessation, and when looking at safety and tolerance outcomes, in most cases, paucity of data made it difficult to draw conclusions."

"Cigarette smoking is the primary cause of , and smoking cessation is the most effective means of stopping the progression of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Worldwide, approximately a billion people smoke cigarettes and 80% reside in low-income and middle-income countries. Though in the United States there has been a substantial decline in cigarette smoking since 1964, when the Surgeon General's report first reviewed smoking, smoking remains widespread in the United States today (about 23% of the population in 2001). Nicotine is addictive, but there are now effective drugs and behavioral interventions to assist people to overcome the addiction. Available evidence shows that smoking cessation can be helped with counseling, nicotine replacement, and bupropion. Less-studied interventions, including hypnosis, acupuncture, aversive therapy, exercise, , s, , s, and , have assisted some people in smoking cessation, but none of those interventions has strong research evidence of efficacy. To promote smoking cessation, physicians should discuss with their smoking patients “relevance, risk, rewards, roadblocks, and repetition,” and with patients who are willing to attempt to quit, physicians should use the 5-step system of “ask, advise, assess, assist, and arrange.”"

"If I mention , I am sure most people in this room understandably think of cocaine — but freebasing was invented by the . You add and to the tobacco leaf mixture — the smoke that's produced is more basic, more alkaline. And, as a consequence, nicotine is delivered across the {[w|Pulmonary alveolus|alveolar membrane}} even more rapidly than would otherwise be the case. And we know that the rapidity — with which a drug is delivered and sating a need for a drug — is an important determinant of its propensity to induce and maintain addiction, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And we could take the entire hour talking about the elements of cigarette design. … It is important that we understand that we have the most addictive substance in our community — whose use is facilitated by a perversely engineered drug delivery device."

"Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) has developed as one of the major urgent threats to public health causing serious issues to successful prevention and treatment of persistent diseases. In spite of different actions taken in recent decades to tackle this issue, the trends of global AMR demonstrate no signs of slowing down. Misusing and overusing different antibacterial agents in the health care setting as well as in the agricultural industry are considered the major reasons behind the emergence of antimicrobial resistance. In addition, the spontaneous evolution, mutation of bacteria, and passing the resistant genes through horizontal gene transfer are significant contributors to antimicrobial resistance. Many studies have demonstrated the disastrous financial consequences of AMR including extremely high healthcare costs due to an increase in hospital admissions and drug usage."

"Let's avoid those unnecessary antibiotics. Let's not feed the antimicrobial-resistance demon."

"The cost of antimicrobial resistance is immense, both economically as well as for human health and lives. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has released a new report (Stemming the superbug tide, 7 Nov 2018), which predicts that 2.4 million people in Europe, North America and Australia will die from infections with resistant microorganisms in the next 30 years and could cost up to US$3.5 billion per year. Southern European countries are predicted to have the highest mortality rate due to resistant infections among countries included in the study. Furthermore, many low and middle-income countries already have high resistance rates, which are predicted to increase disproportionately. For example, in Brazil, Indonesia and Russia 40–60% of infections are already caused by resistant microorganisms, and resistance is predicted to rise 4–7 times faster in these countries than in other OECD countries."

"The development of antibiotics is considered among the most important advances of modern science. Antibiotics have saved millions of lives. However, antimicrobial resistance (AMR) threatens this progress and presents significant risks to human health. ... The increase in AMR has been driven by a diverse set of factors, including inappropriate antibiotic prescribing and sales, use of antibiotics outside of the health care sector, and genetic factors intrinsic to bacteria. The problem has been exacerbated by inadequate economic incentives for pharmaceutical development of new antimicrobial agents. A range of specific AMR concerns, including carbapenem- and colistin-resistant gram-negative organisms, pose a clinical challenge. Alternative approaches to address the AMR threat include new methods of antibacterial drug identification and strategies that neutralize virulence factors."

"If the pharmaceutical industry will not end its greed, which is literally killing Americans, then we will end it for them... The United States pays by far the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs. This has created a health care crisis in which 1 in 5 American adults cannot afford to get the medicine they need."