SOJ Immunology

4

Authors: Alaa E Ahmed

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, with its vast geographical area, and its location at the boundary of the equatorial, has seen recently several outbreaks of either tropical or Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTD). Being the center of the Islamic world, with millions of pilgrimages visiting the holy sites in Saudi Arabia in the annual sessions of pilgrimage and Umrah, puts the world health at risk of wide and uncontrolled epidemics with its close boundaries with both Yemen and Egypt, which are the most countries in the Middle East region harboring NTD’s, puts the Kingdom at an additional risk together with the greenhouse effect of global warming and climate changes. The current status of the NTDs in Saudi Arabia is currently unknown due to several factors of which, poor reporting, lack of proper health workers training and surveillance efforts, being the most important factors. This mini-review will summarize the types of NTD’s diseases and current status in Saudi Arabia.

6

Authors: Payam Behzadi, Elham Behzadi, and Reza Ranjbar

The chronic and lifelong gastrointestinal tract disorder of Crohn’s Disease (CD) is a type of inflammatory bowel disease with unclear causative agent. CD is directly correlated with a triad group of predisposing factors including genetic problems, immune system malfunctions and environmental factors. The incidence and prevalence of CD in industrialized countries are high and in developing countries are low. However, industrial progressions have risen up the occurrence of CD in some developing countries in Asia and Africa. Because of some significant changes regarding to the incidence and prevalence of CD in global scale, the aim of this review article is to show the incidence and prevalence of CD worldwide.For preparing this review, Google Scholar search engine and PubMed database were used to find the most recent and valuable original and review articles. The searched articles were then studied and sifted for writing the present review literature.The results of different investigations show a significant increase among industrialized developing countries within Asia and Africa continents. Besides, the rate of CD is stable within western countries with no significant changes. Continuous studies relating to the incidence and prevalence of CD will lead to discover the real causative agent of the disease. Moreover, detecting a diversity of the predisposing factors in different geographic areas may help to control and prevent the progression of CD in future.

12

Authors: Gungor Sobaci, Yakup Cevik, Bekir Kucuk, Ugur Acar

Dexamethasone implant, with its durable, potent antiinflammatory, antiangiogenic, and neuroprotective properties, has gained a wide variety of therapeutic applications in ocular diseases otherwise destined for blindness; however, its mechanisms of action,including side effects, in clinical use are still under investigation. This article constitutes an up-to-date summary of knowledge on signal transduction pathways in the therapeutic use of dexamethasone implants in the eye.