The inherent disadvantages of traditional non-flexible aerogels, such as high fragility and moisture sensitivity, severely restrict their applications. To address these issues and make the aerogels efficient, especially for advanced medical applications, different techniques have been used to incorporate flexibility in aerogel materials. In recent years, a great boom in flexible aerogels has been observed, which has enabled them to be used in high-tech biomedical applications. The current study comprises a comprehensive review of the preparation techniques of pure polymeric-based hybrid and single-component aerogels and their use in biomedical applications. The biomedical applications of these hybrid aerogels will also be reviewed and discussed, where the flexible polymeric components in the aerogels provide the main contribution. The combination of highly controlled porosity, large internal surfaces, flexibility, and the ability to conform into 3D interconnected structures support versatile properties, which are required for numerous potential medical applications such as tissue engineering; drug delivery reservoir systems; biomedical implants like heart stents, pacemakers, and artificial heart valves; disease diagnosis; and the development of antibacterial materials. The present review also explores the different mechanical, chemical, and physical properties in numerical values, which are most wanted for the fabrication of different materials used in the biomedical fields.

The current systematic review presents COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy among parents for their children in Middle Eastern countries. Moreover, the vaccine acceptance rate of parents from the Middle East and the factors effecting the acceptance rate were reviewed and summarized. For this systematic review, basic electronic academic databases (Scopus, Science Direct, ProQuest, Web of Science and PubMed) were used for the search, along with a manual search on Google Scholar. This systematic review was conducted by following the “Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA)” guidelines. Moreover, utilizing the framework of the PECO-S (Population Exposure Comparison Outcome Study design), various observational studies were recruited for this review. Out of 2123 studies, 25 studies meeting the inclusion criteria were included in the current review. All of the included studies were about parental vaccine hesitancy for COVID-19 in Middle Eastern countries and published during 2020–2022. Overall, 25 research papers comprising 10 different Middle Eastern countries with 33,558 parents were included. The average age of parents was 39.13 (range: 18–70) years, while the mean age of children was 7.95 (range: 0–18) years. The overall hesitancy rate was 44.2% with a SD of ± 19.7. The included studies presented enhanced COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy among parents in Middle Eastern countries. The lower vaccine acceptance rate among parents was mainly because of a fear of the potential side effects. Furthermore, the lack of information regarding vaccine safety and efficacy, the fear of unreported side effects and concerns about the authenticity of vaccine development and preparation were the predictors of parental COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy among Middle Eastern countries.

In Saudi Arabia, the Ministry of Health (MoH) has implemented strict rules to ensure COVID-19 vaccination uptake by the general public. However, there is hesitancy about COVID-19 vaccination among parents for their children worldwide. We aimed to determine the concerns, behaviors, perceptions, and hesitancy of COVID-19 vaccination among parents for their children in Saudi Arabia. Parents of children aged 5–11 years were included in this cross-sectional study. A total of 1507 responses were obtained using the convenience sampling technique. The data were analyzed using SPSS version 25.0 by applying descriptive and inferential statistics. Of the parents who responded, 74.5% believed that the COVID-19 vaccination could affect the genes of children, and 72.8% believed that the COVID-19 vaccination could have a greater number of positive impacts on the overall health of children. In total, 87% of the parents were satisfied with the vaccination services and effective policies of the MoH, Saudi Arabia. This study concluded that there is a greater need to increase public awareness regarding the beneficial impact of COVID-19 vaccination on the overall health of children. Effective awareness campaigns are also required to provide empirical information to the public that COVID-19 vaccination for children is safe and effective.

Background and Objective: Irrational use and overuse of antibiotics is considered a major cause of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) among patients admitted to hospitals, especially in intensive care units (ICUs). ICUs are the most critical wards in healthcare settings, where the use of antibiotics is much higher compared to other wards. Therefore, the appropriate administration and monitoring of antibiotic usage in these units is a matter of concern. Materials and Methods: This retrospective study evaluated the types, utilization patterns, sensitivity, and resistance of various antibiotics used among patients admitted to the ICUs of different hospitals after the third wave of the coronavirus disease in 2019 (COVID-19) in Pakistan. Results: It was observed that more than 40% of the patients were given two antibiotics and 54.3% were given at least one antibiotic each day. A total of 768 antibiotics from different groups, based on the World Health Organization (WHO) Access, Watch, and Reserve (AWaRe) classification, were prescribed to 313 patients admitted to ICUs between April and August 2021. Among the types of antibiotics, amoxicillin/clavulanic acid was the most frequently used antibiotic (75 prescriptions). It was also observed that the majority of the bacterial isolates were more sensitive to carbapenems than the other antibiotics. The current study showed that antibiotic usage according to the AWaRe classifications was 31.8% in the Access category, 59.5% in the Watch category, and 8.7% in the Reserve category in ICUs of the studied hospitals after the third wave of COVID-19. Conclusions: The findings of the study also highlight the importance and continuous need for the implementation of antibiotic stewardship programs to optimize the appropriate utilization of antibiotics in the ICUs of the studied hospitals.

Lung cancer is the most common cause of cancer deaths worldwide, and lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD) is the most common histological subtype. However, the prognostic and predictive outcomes differ because of the heterogeneity of programmed cell death. The purpose of this work is to investigate and develop a cuproptosis-associated lncRNA-based LUAD prediction marker. We firstly performed bioinformatic analysis of the Cuprotosis database and The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database to obtain 19 cuprotosis-related gene datasets and transcriptional data for LUAD. Univariate, least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO), and multivariate Cox regression analysis were utilized to construct cuproptosis-associated lncRNA modes. LUAD patients were thus classified into high-risk and low-risk categories based on prognostic risk values, with a median of It acted as a boundary. Risk models were evaluated and validated using Kaplan-Meier analysis, principal component analysis (PCA), gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) and nomograms. Utilizing the TCGA-LUAD dataset, we identified seven predicted cuproptosis-associated lncRNAs in tumor microenvironment to create the risk model. 95.54% (214/224) of high-risk category tumor samples included cuproptosis-associated gene alterations, compared to 85.65% (203/237) of low-risk category tumor samples, with TP53 accounting for the bulk of occurrences. According to these findings, risk value was superior to other clinical variables and tumor mutation burden as a predictor of 1-, 3-, and 5-year overall survival (OS). The predictive validity of the cuproptosis-associated lncRNA-based risk model for LUAD is high, and this may have implications for how lung cancer patients are treated individually.