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The progesterone vaginal ring (PVR) is a ring-shaped device designed for use by women in the postpartum period to regulate fertility by complementing and extending the contraceptive effectiveness of lactational amenorrhea to suppress ovulation.1 It is available in eight Latin American countries for use by breastfeeding women who want more effective modern contraceptives in addition to contraceptive benefits provided by lactational amenorrhea alone.1 The PVR is a method that can be suitable to women in sub-Saharan Africa, given the near-universal practice of breastfeeding and the current level of unmet need for contraception in the postpartum period. Efforts are currently underway to introduce the PVR in Africa and south Asia. To ensure a seamless introduction, scale up and sustainability of the PVR in the region, the Population Council conducted pre-introductory activities with stakeholders in Kenya, Nigeria and Senegal to determine the level of interest in the ring, potential facilitating and mitigating factors and identify solutions to address challenges. The research team combined three approaches: in-depth interviews with family planning stakeholders; desk review of reports and policy guidelines; and in-group meetings. The stakeholders reached included public sector officials including policy makers and program managers, implementing partners, regulators, women and religious networks. All three countries had a promising policy and programmatic context that was supportive to PVR introduction. The exercise provided insights on socio-cultural and religious factors that could potentially impact how the PVR is perceived within communities and identified possible remedies to address misperceptions. It also paved the way for the conduct of an acceptability study of the PVR among breastfeeding women in these countries. The high acceptability rate in each country and the support expressed by government and other stakeholders have provided impetus for registration of the product in each country. Learning from this ...

Despite tremendous progress over the past decades in family planning and fertility reduction, more than 220 million women have unmet need for contraception globally. The government of Nigeria pledged over $11 million to procure contraceptive commodities for distribution in the public sector from 2011–2015, to increase the contraceptive prevalence rate (CPR) that had stalled at 10 percent for almost two decades. The Population Council is facilitating the registration, introduction, and scale-up of the Progesterone Contraceptive Vaginal Ring (PCVR), designed particularly for breastfeeding women, in the sub-Saharan African countries of Kenya, Nigeria, and Senegal. In Nigeria, restrictive policies regarding matching health care cadres with maternal and child health interventions have previously hindered widespread availability of essential commodities to rural areas where providers' skills were deemed marginal. With the adoption of the national task-sharing policy, which enables lower cadre and community-level providers to deliver essential reproductive health services in hard-to-reach terrains, this report weighs the feasibility of the PCVR to leverage the existing task-sharing platform to achieve large-scale rural uptake, expand the methods mix for postpartum contraception, and contribute to increasing the CPR in this country.

Le Gouvernement du Sénégal s'est engagé dans une politique volontariste de repositionnement de la planification familiale à travers l'adoption d'un Plan d'Action National de Planification Familiale. Pour mieux adresser les besoins de contraception des femmes et réduire les taux d'abandon, le Population Council a initié le développement d'une gamme d'anneaux vaginaux; le premier produit développé était l'anneau vaginal à progestérone ou AVP, conçu pour les femmes qui allaitent en vue de prolonger la période d'aménorrhée lactationnelle et ainsi promouvoir l'espacement des naissances. Avec l'appui de la Fondation Bill & Melinda Gates, le Population Council a entrepris des activités de pré-introduction de l'AVP dans trois pays d'Afrique subsaharienne: le Kenya, le Nigéria, et le Sénégal. Les résultats de l'étude au Senegal indiquent que l'introduction de l'AVP se présente dans un contexte social, économique et politique très favorable. Il est donc important d'intégrer les leçons apprises de cette étude d'acceptabilité et des expériences antérieures conduites dans ce domaine. --- The Government of Senegal has embarked on a proactive policy of repositioning family planning through the adoption of a National Plan of Action for Family Planning. To better address women's contraceptive needs and reduce dropout rates, the Population Council initiated the development of a range of vaginal rings; the first product developed was the progesterone vaginal ring, or AVP, designed for women who are breastfeeding to prolong the lactational amenorrhea period and thus promote birth spacing. With the support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Population Council undertook pre-introduction activities of AVP in three countries in sub-Saharan Africa: Kenya, Nigeria, and Senegal. The results of the study in Senegal indicate that the introduction of AVP is in a very favorable social, economic, and political context. It is therefore important to incorporate the lessons learned from this acceptability study and previous ...

To bridge the gap between the demand for innovation and access to novel contraceptive options for breastfeeding women, the Population Council and its partners conducted three distinct Willingness to Pay research initiatives to estimate the effect of price on demand for the Progesterone Vaginal Ring (PVR) in sub-Saharan Africa, where unmet need is outpacing the ability to provide timely, cost-effective access to new methods. Additionally, changes in the resource landscape have prompted governments to explore "Total Market" solutions. The Total Market Approach is defined as a coordinated approach that serves all clients in a country—from those requiring free or highly subsidized services to those who are willing and able to pay—to maximize access, equity, and sustainability and to direct scarce resources to sectors and users where need is not met. Using this as a guiding design principle, the research presented in this brief provides new insights on the amount consumers are willing to pay for the PVR from public, private nonprofit, and private commercial service sectors.

"Colloidal drug delivery systems present a range of therapeutic benefits in the treatment of a number of challenging conditions, allowing researchers to cross barriers that have previously prevented efficient treatment while offering improved and more targeted absorption. Summarizing recent research in the field, Colloids in Drug Delivery assembles the work of 65 of the world's leading colloid scientists who examine the full spectrum of this rapidly emerging science, from pure to applied, most of it drawn from their own experience and research."--Jacket.

Since the last few decades, the development of smart hydrogels, which can respond to stimuli and adapt their responses based on external cues from their environments, has become a thriving research frontier in the biomedical engineering field. Nowadays, drug delivery systems have received great attention and smart hydrogels can be potentially used in these systems due to their high stability, physicochemical properties, and biocompatibility. Smart hydrogels can change their hydrophilicity, swelling ability, physical properties, and molecules permeability, influenced by external stimuli such as pH, temperature, electrical and magnetic fields, light, and the biomolecules' concentration, thus resulting in the controlled release of the loaded drugs. Herein, this review encompasses the latest investigations in the field of stimuli-responsive drug-loaded hydrogels and our contribution to this matter. ; This study has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation Programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement no. 860462 for the "PREMUROSA" project.

Coiled coils are characterized by an arrangement of two or more alpha-helices into a superhelix and one of few protein motifs where the sequence-to-structure relationship to a large extent have been decoded and understood. The abundance of both natural and de novo designed coil coils provides a rich molecular toolbox for self assembly of elaborate bespoke molecular architectures, nanostructures, and materials. Leveraging on the numerous possibilities to tune both affinities and preferences for polypeptide oligomerization, coiled coils offer unique possibilities to design modular and dynamic assemblies that can respond in a predictable manner to biomolecular interactions and subtle physicochemical cues. In this review, strategies to use coiled coils in design of novel therapeutics and advanced drug delivery systems are discussed. The applications of coiled coils for generating drug carriers and vaccines, and various aspects of using coiled coils for controlling and triggering drug release, and for improving drug targeting and drug uptake are described. The plethora of innovative coiled coil-based molecular systems provide new knowledge and techniques for improving efficacy of existing drugs and can facilitate development of novel therapeutic strategies. (c) 2020 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). 1. Introduction 27 2. The coiled coil motif 27 3. Coiled coils and coiled coil-hybrids for drug delivery and therapeutics 30 3.1. Coiled coils in liposome drug delivery systems 30 3.2. Lipidated coiled coils for assembly of virus-like particles 31 3.3. Coiled coil nanoparticles 31 3.4. Coiled coil nanocarriers 33 3.5. Coiled coil polymer-hybrids 33 3.6. Coiled coil-based hydrogels 36 3.7. Coiled coil inorganic nanoparticle hybrids 37 3.8. Coiled coils combined with cell penetrating peptides 37 3.9. Coiled coils for improved targeting 38 ; Funding Agencies|Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research (SFF)Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research [FFL15-0026, RMX18-0039]; Swedish Government Strategic Research Area inMaterials Science on Functional Materials at Linkoping University [2009-00971]; Knut and Alice Wallenberg FoundationKnut & Alice Wallenberg Foundation [KAW 2016.0231]; Swedish Research CouncilSwedish Research CouncilEuropean Commission [2017-04475]; Cancer Foundation [17 0534]

AbstractIn a normal delivery the second-born twin experiences a slight degree of hypoxia, which, as a rule, has no clinical importance. It is the oxygen debt everybody makes by running 30 metres.

AbstractPregnant women display a higher risk of progression to disease and higher viral loads during infections due to their more permissive, tolerogenic immune system. However, only few studies have focused on SARS-CoV-2 intrapartum vertical transmission via vaginal secretions or faeces. The aim of this study was to investigate the presence of the virus in vaginal, rectal and blood specimens from pregnant women characterized by different COVID-19 disease severity. We enrolled 56 SARS-CoV-2-positive pregnant women, of which 46 (82%) were in the third trimester of pregnancy, 6 (10%) in the second and 4 (7%) in the first. QPCR was performed to detect the virus in vaginal and rectal swabs and in plasma samples. SARS-CoV-2 was detected in 27% of rectal swabs of pregnant women in the third trimester, while no virus particles were detected in vaginal swabs of the same patients. Furthermore, only 4% plasma samples tested positive to SARS-CoV-2. No virus was detected in newborn's nasopharyngeal swabs. Despite the low number of subjects enrolled, our data suggest that, while theoretically possible, intrapartum vaginal or orofecal SARS-CoV-2 transmission seems to be unlikely.

Findings for this article are derived from our National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)-funded study of older and younger Baby Boomers and marijuana use. We explore Baby Boomers' use of a variety of cannabis products and the motives behind the choices they make concerning these preparations. Cannabis concentrates and edible goods have become increasingly popular over the years. With so many new ways to consume marijuana and a growing number of medical marijuana dispensaries, more and more people are using alternative cannabis products to relieve physical ailments, to improve mental health issues, and for recreational purposes. We explore Baby Boomers' motives to use and how aging may change those motives and influence their choices in cannabis delivery systems. As they get older, Boomers' health concerns grow and many have turned to these alternative cannabis products to improve mental and physical well-being, and even to reduce the potential risks of traditional marijuana smoking.