Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs), principally ischemic heart disease (IHD) and stroke, are the leading cause of global mortality and a major contributor to disability. This paper reviews the magnitude of total CVD burden, including 13 underlying causes of cardiovascular death and 9 related risk factors, using estimates from the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) Study 2019. GBD, an ongoing multinational collaboration to provide comparable and consistent estimates of population health over time, used all available population-level data sources on incidence, prevalence, case fatality, mortality, and health risks to produce estimates for 204 countries and territories from 1990 to 2019.

Cancers are a major contributor to disease burden worldwide, and projections forecast that global cancer burden will continue to grow for at least the next 2 decades.^1-4 The United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) recognize the need for reducing cancer burden as part of target 3.4, stating “By 2030, reduce by one third premature mortality from noncommunicable diseases [NCDs] through prevention and treatment and promote mental health and well-being.”⁵ Most countries will need to accelerate their efforts to reduce NCD burden, including cancer, to meet this SDG target.^6,7 Increasing the pace of progress will be particularly critical given the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, which has led to delays and disruptions in cancer screenings, diagnosis, and treatment around the world.^8-12

Measuring routine childhood vaccination is crucial to inform global vaccine policies and programme implementation, and to track progress towards targets set by the Global Vaccine Action Plan (GVAP) and Immunization Agenda 2030. Robust estimates of routine vaccine coverage are needed to identify past successes and persistent vulnerabilities. Drawing from the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) 2020, Release 1, we did a systematic analysis of global, regional, and national vaccine coverage trends using a statistical framework, by vaccine and over time. For this analysis we collated 55 326 country-specific, cohort-specific, year-specific, vaccine-specific, and dose-specific observations of routine childhood vaccination coverage between 1980 and 2019. Using spatiotemporal Gaussian process regression, we produced location-specific and year-specific estimates of 11 routine childhood vaccine coverage indicators for 204 countries and territories from 1980 to 2019, adjusting for biases in country-reported data and reflecting reported stockouts and supply disruptions. We analysed global and regional trends in coverage and numbers of zero-dose children (defined as those who never received a diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis [DTP] vaccine dose), progress towards GVAP targets, and the relationship between vaccine coverage and sociodemographic development. By 2019, global coverage of third-dose DTP (DTP3; 81·6% [95% uncertainty interval 80·4-82·7]) more than doubled from levels estimated in 1980 (39·9% [37·5-42·1]), as did global coverage of the first-dose measles-containing vaccine (MCV1; from 38·5% [35·4-41·3] in 1980 to 83·6% [82·3-84·8] in 2019). Third-dose polio vaccine (Pol3) coverage also increased, from 42·6% (41·4-44·1) in 1980 to 79·8% (78·4-81·1) in 2019, and global coverage of newer vaccines increased rapidly between 2000 and 2019. The global number of zero-dose children fell by nearly 75% between 1980 and 2019, from 56·8 million (52·6-60·9) to 14·5 million (13·4-15·9). However, over the past decade, global vaccine coverage broadly plateaued; 94 countries and territories recorded decreasing DTP3 coverage since 2010. Only 11 countries and territories were estimated to have reached the national GVAP target of at least 90% coverage for all assessed vaccines in 2019. After achieving large gains in childhood vaccine coverage worldwide, in much of the world this progress was stalled or reversed from 2010 to 2019. These findings underscore the importance of revisiting routine immunisation strategies and programmatic approaches, recentring service delivery around equity and underserved populations. Strengthening vaccine data and monitoring systems is crucial to these pursuits, now and through to 2030, to ensure that all children have access to, and can benefit from, lifesaving vaccines. Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Jung KW, et al. Cancer Res Treat. 2011 Mar;43(1):1-11. http://dx.doi.org/10.4143/crt.2011.43.1.1

Natural Products for Cancer-Targeted Therapy: Citrus Flavonoids as Potent Chemopreventive Agents Natural products;targeted therapy;cancer;citrus flavonoids;co-chemotherapy;chemoprevention; Targeted therapy has been a very promising strategy of drug development research. Many molecular mechanims of diseases have been known to be regulated by abundance of proteins, such as receptors and hormones. Chemoprevention for treatment and prevention of diseases are continuously developed. Pre-clinical and clinical studies in chemoprevention field yielded many valuable data in preventing the onset of disease and suppressing the progress of their growth, making chemoprevention a challenging and a very rational strategy in future researches. Natural products being rich of flavonoids are those fruits belong to the genus citrus. Ethanolic extract of Citrus reticulata and Citrus aurantiifolia peels showed anticarcinogenic, antiproliferative, co-chemotherapeutic and estrogenic effects. Several examples of citrus flavonoids that are potential as chemotherapeutic agents are tangeretin, nobiletin, hesperetin, hesperidin, naringenin, and naringin. Those flavonoids have been shown to possess inhibition activity on certain cancer cells' growth through various mechanisms. Moreover, citrus flavonoids also perform promising effect in combination with several chemotherapeutic agents against the growth of cancer cells. Some mechanisms involved in those activities are through cell cycle modulation, antiangiogenic effect, and apoptosis induction.Previous studies showed that tangeretin suppressed the growth of T47D breast cancer cells by inhibiting ERK phosphorylation. While in combination with tamoxifen, doxorubicin, and 5-FU, respectively, it was proven to be synergist on several cancer cells. Hesperidin and naringenin increased cytotoxicitity of doxorubicin on MCF-7 cells and HeLa cells. Besides, citrus flavonoids also performed estrogenic effect in vivo. One example is hesperidin having the ability to decrease the concentration of serum and hepatic lipid and reduce osteoporosis of ovariectomized rats. Those studies showed the great potential of citrus fruits as natural product to be developed as not only the source of co-chemotherapeutic agents, but also phyto-estrogens. Therefore, further study needs to be conducted to explore the potential of citrus fruits in overcoming cancer.