Tag: cardiovascular disease

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Bulgaria’s National Cardiac Society pioneers ARPHA’s top-to-bottom bilingual publishing

The first 2020 issue of the society’s bilingual journal is already online on a brand new and user-friendly website

(Прочетете на български тук)

This month, ARPHA Platform welcomed the fourth medical academic journal to its portfolio: Bulgarian Cardiology („Българска кардиология”), the official publication venue of the Bulgarian National Cardiac Society since 1995. The Society is a member of the European Society of Cardiology. 

With its first 2020 issue, Bulgarian Cardiology pioneers the Bulgarian-English bilingual publishing solution from ARPHA, the open-access scholarly publishing platform, developed by the publisher and technology provider Pensoft. Thanks to this, authors will be able to publish their papers either in Bulgarian, or in Bulgarian and English. In the latter case, the article will be displayed in both languages side by side, as exemplified in the paper “Novel approaches to treat resistant hypertension” by Dr Alexandra Cherneva (Acibadem City Clinic – Cardiovascular center, Bulgaria) and Prof Ivo Petrov (Sofia University and Acibadem City Clinic – Cardiovascular center, Bulgaria).

“Novel approaches to treat resistant hypertension”, a research paper by Dr Alexandra Cherneva and Prof Ivo Petrov, published in the latest issue of Bulgarian Cardiology, available in both Bulgarian and English
(DOI: 10.3897/bgcardio.26.e52712)

For non-Bulgarian speaking authors, who submit their manuscript in English, the journal provides translation to Bulgarian, so that the published article is also available in both languages. In the latest issue, this is exemplified by the Editorial piece “Atrial fibrillation: Importance of real world data from regional registries. A focus on the BALKAN-AF registry”, authored by the international team of Dr Monika Kozieł, Prof Gregory Y. H. Lip and Dr Tatjana S. Potpara.

Having already acquired its own glossy and user-friendly website provided by ARPHA, Bulgarian Cardiology also takes advantage of the platform’s signature fast-track, end-to-end publishing system, which is to benefit all journal users: authors, reviewers and editors alike. In addition, the published content enjoys automated export of data to aggregators, as well as web-service integrations with major global indexing and archiving databases.

The first issue of Bulgarian Cardiology was published in 1995 to provide a scholarly outlet for the Bulgarian Society of Cardiology. Ever since then, it has been serving as an essential forum to bring together the cardiology community in the country. Its aim is to publish both the academic achievements of the Bulgarian medical experts and the key practical guidelines of the European Society of Cardiology.  

Bulgarian Cardiology accepts for publication research and review articles, clinical cases, editorials, letters to the Editor, European Society of Cardiology guidelines, announcements from the Bulgarian Society of Cardiology and materials presented at their meetings, and others. 

“It’s a pleasure to all of us at ARPHA to welcome the Bulgarian Society of Cardiology’s journal. It’s a fantastic win-win situation for both parties: while we managed to customise and provide the necessary services the Society asked us for, they offered us the opportunity to further push our capabilities and know-how, in order to launch our first top-to-bottom bilingual publishing solution,”

says Prof. Lyubomir Penev, founder and CEO at ARPHA and Pensoft.

The journal will continue to be published also in print with four issues a year.

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Visit the journal’s website at https://journal.bgcardio.org/.

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New promising compound against heart rhythm disorders and clogged arteries

The pharmacological agent outperforms current drugs in most of cases, show multiple experiments

A new pharmacological agent demonstrates promising results for the prevention of a wide range of heart rhythm disorders, including both cardiac and brain injury-induced arrhythmias. Furthermore, the compound (SS-68) demonstrates significant activity in conditions of reduced blood flow to the heart caused by obstructed arteries.

The study, conducted by a research team led by Dr Saida Bogus of the Kuban State Medical University in Russia, is published in the open-access journal Research Results in Pharmacology.

Each year, more than 17 million people from around the globe (mostly Europe and the USA) die of cardiovascular diseases and related complications, according to the World Health Organization. In Russia, about 3 out of 1,000 people suffer from the most common and malignant heart rhythm disorder: atrial fibrillation (AF), where the count is expected to at least double in the next 30 years. While sometimes lacking symptoms, atrial fibrillation could generally be recognised by a racing, irregular heartbeat, dizziness, fatigue, shortness of breath and chest pain, thereby largely compromising the quality of one’s life. The disorder could also lead to various complications, including dementia, stroke and heart failure.

Currently, the drugs administered to AF patients have major deficiencies, including narrow therapeutic windows, which means that even minimal imprecision in the dosage could result in unacceptable toxicity. Hence, patients need to be closely monitored and have their doses adjusted on a regular basis.

In their study, the team turned to the aminoindole derivatives to look for an alternative compound. This chemical group has already shown a significant potential in terms of cardio-pharmacological activity.

Having tested the SS-68 compound on multiple occasions in different animals, the researchers report that it has a pronounced antiarrhythmic effect and is able to bring the electrical activity of the heart back to normal and, in most cases, outperforming the reference drugs used in clinical practice: amiodarone, lidocaine, aymaline, ethacizine, etmozine and quinidine anaprilin.

Further, in brain injury-induced arrhythmias, the compound was found to reduce the episodes of epilepsy. It was also observed to have a positive effect in clogged blood vessels where it is reported to have successfully increased the coronary blood flow. In addition, the compound managed to decrease the area of necrosis in the heart tissue caused by a heart attack.

“To date, there have been significant achievements of Russian and foreign pharmacologists, chemists and clinicians in creating and introducing into the practical medicine a number of antiarrhythmic drugs different by their chemical structure, nature, spectrum, activity and mechanism of action; nevertheless, one of the most important tasks of modern pharmacology is searching for and developing new highly active substances of the corresponding action,” explain the scientists.

“Special attention should be paid to an in-depth study of the molecular mechanisms of action of this compound,” they conclude.

A paper looking further into the molecular mechanisms of the antiarrhythmic action of SS-68 prepared by the same research team is currently in press with Research Results in Pharmacology.

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Original source:

Bogus SK, Galenko-Yaroshevsky PA, Suzdalev KF, Sukoyan GV, Abushkevich VG (2018) 2-phenyl-1-(3-pyrrolidin-1-il-propyl)-1 H-indole hydrochloride (SS-68): Antiarrhythmic and cardioprotective activity and its molecular mechanisms of action (Part I). Research Results in Pharmacology 4(2): 133-150. https://doi.org/10.3897/rrpharmacology.4.2859

 

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Research Results in Pharmacology is one of the journals hosted on ARPHA through the platform’s white-label publishing solution.