HIGHLIGHTS Since the geopolitical developments of 1989, former centrally planned economies of Eastern Europe followed distinctively different pathways in national pharmaceutical expenditure evolution as compared to their free market Western European counterparts.Long term spending on pharmaceuticals expressed as percentage of total health expenditure was falling in free market economies as of 1989

BACKGROUND: Serbia, as the largest market of the Western Balkans, has entered socioeconomic transition with substantial delay compared to most of Eastern Europe. Its health system reform efforts were bold during the past 15 years, but their results were inconsistent in various areas. The two waves of global recession that hit Balkan economies ultimately reflected to the financial situation of heal

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of two of the most important functional CYP1A2 variations -3860G > A and -163C > A on carbamazepine pharmacokinetics in Serbian pediatric epileptic patients.METHODS: The study involved 40 Serbian pediatric epileptic patients on steady-state carbamazepine treatment. Genotyping for -3860G > A and -163C > A was carried out using PCR-RFLP

BACKGROUND: Exploration of long-term health expenditure and longevity trends across three major sub-regions of Eastern Europe since 1989.METHODS: 24 countries were classified as EU 2004, CIS, or SEE. European Health for All Database (HFA-DB) 1989-2012 data were processed using difference-in-difference (DiD) and data envelopment analysis (DEA).RESULTS: The strongest expenditure growth was recorded

We critically discuss various experimental methods to determine Curie temperature TC of (Ga,Mn)As thin layers or other conducting magnetic materials by means of electric charge transport measurements. They all base on the influence of sample magnetization on the magnetoresistivity tensor ρ̂ and are an alternative to the method based upon an analysis of the temperature derivative of the sample resi

Propanal is a critical stable intermediate derived from the oxidation of 1-propanol, a promising alcohol fuel additive. To deepen the knowledge and accurately describe propanal combustion characteristics, new burning velocity measurements at different temperatures were carried out and a new detailed kinetic mechanism for propanal was proposed. Experiments were performed using the heat flux method

This study compares the thermo-fluidic characteristics of sandwich panels with the X-lattice and the Pyramidal lattice at a given porosity and surface area density. The numerical model is validated against available experimental data at first. At a given Reynolds number in the range of 3100–5700, numerical results reveal that the X-lattice sandwich panel provides a 47–60% higher average overall Nu

Code stability is a matter of concern for three-dimensional (3D) fuel cell models operating both at high current density and at high cell voltage. An idealized mathematical model of a fuel cell should converge for all potentiostatic or galvanostatic boundary conditions ranging from open circuit to closed circuit. Many fail to do so, due to (i) fuel or oxygen starvation causing divergence as local

A design of experiments analysis was performed to investigate the effects of pilot quantity, combustion phasing and exhaust gas recirculation on performance and emissions in a gasoline partially premixed combustion to find out the optimal combination of the all varied parameters. The experimental activities were performed on a light-duty Volvo Euro 6 diesel engine. The test was performed under ste

Purpose: Due to the urgency and the magnitude of the environmental problems caused by food supply chains, it is important that the recommendations for packaging improvements given in life cycle assessment (LCA) studies of food rest on a balanced consideration of all relevant environmental impacts of packaging. The purpose of this article is to analyse the extent to which foodLCAs include the indir

Theory and evidence suggest that some selective pressures are more common on islands than in adjacent mainland habitats, leading evolution to follow predictable trends. The existence of predictable evolutionary trends has nonetheless been difficult to demonstrate, mainly because of the challenge of separating in situ evolution from sorting processes derived from colonization events. Here we use br

Background: This inter-comparison exercise was performed to demonstrate the variability of quantitative SPECT/CT imaging for lutetium-177 (177Lu) in current clinical practice. Our aim was to assess the feasibility of using international inter-comparison exercises as a means to ensure consistency between clinical sites whilst enabling the sites to use their own choice of quantitative imaging protoc

Objectives: To investigate associations between economic stress in childhood and suicide thoughts and attempts. Study design: The 2012 public health survey in Scania, Sweden, is a cross-sectional postal questionnaire study including 28,029 participants, aged 18–80 years. Methods: Associations were analyzed in logistic regressions. Results: A 12.1% prevalence of men and 15.5% of women had ever expe

We provide new evidence on some of the mechanisms reflected in the intergenerational transmission of human capital. Applying both an adoption and a twin design to rich data from the Swedish military enlistment, we show that greater parental education increases sons’ cognitive and non-cognitive skills, as well as their health. The estimates are in many cases similar across research designs and sugg