Nine eleven celebrated a decade of safe measures taken in order to prevent further useless human losses. Since then, violence against human beings is supposed to be prevented and opposed by security measures. The number of human beings deceased as a result of that terrorism act was appreciated at 2982 (1).
Compared to this devastating attack against humanity, the fact that a number of 6467 patients died in the USA in 2012 while waiting for an available organ passed almost unobserved by the media (2). Still, a number of 22187 organ transplantations were performed from 8143 deceased donors. Summing up the lost human lives in the battle to survive by human organ transplantation, we can easily see that despite the organ shortage, the gift of life allowed 7571 otherwise lost patients to continue to live. To an accountable, it would be a positive balance. When looking at the figures of the waiting list, that is over 120 000 souls, the disparity between need and supply of transplantable organs is impressive (2).
So, are there ways or opportunities to increase organ donation? And doing so, are we at risk of disregarding moral or ethical values? Could we actually harm the donors and/or their families? [More]

Hematopoietic stem cells are defined as cells with self-renewing capabilities that can differentiate into multiple cell liniages. In adults, the stem cells are part of the tissue-specific cells into which they are committed to differentiate. The embrionic stem cells are derived from embryos and have the ability to generate any cell in the body.
The adult hematopoietic stem cells are organized in a hierarchic tree, with multipotent, self-renewing stem cells at the base, the committed progenitor cells as the main branches and lineage restricted precursor cells as terminal branches. The lineage restricted stem cells give rise to terminally differentiated cells. The classic paradigm of organ-restricted stem cell differentiation is challenged by the possibility of the hematopoietic stem cells to retain a degree of plasticity that allows them to diffe-rentiate into any cell of the adult human body, according to the microenvironment [1].
The initial source for stem cells was the bone marrow. After transplantation of unselected cells in animals previously conditioned with chemotherapy/radiotherapy treatment there was evidence that not only hematopoietic tissue was generated by the transplanted cells, but also non-lymphohematopoietic tissue, such as hepatocytes, muscle fibers and neuronal tissue.
Since 1990 the main source of stem cells was the periphe-ral blood after mobilization with cytokine (granulocyte colony stimulating factor – G-CSF) with or without chemotherapy. Several investigators reported that human peripheral blood stem cells can generate also non-lymphohematopoietic tissue in the same way the cells from the marrow did.[More]

A parochial journal like ours sticks to its values. Strives to be acknowledged as a reliable means of communication. As an opportunity to the members of our university to publish their research. And what are exactly our values?
Fairness as to the intent of the research, good faith, correctness and transparency, curiosity, respect for the subjects and equally for the research team members. All post-Hippocratic principles. But just as afterload includes preload, we know that all the ancient Hippocratic principles are in and observed, and followed.
These lines are intended for our readers and authors to let them know that they are welcome to submit their articles, provided they follow the rules. Medical literature is made to be read, articles to be analyzed, sometimes even quoted. Authors are more or less driven by genuine appetite for research. No matter the driving force, a good outcome is to be expected, utilitarians as we often tend to be.
One of my PhD students confessed recently that the more she was involved, the more she became interested in research. Ideas came as she worked and analyzed results. [More]

This editorial reffers to “Value of Liver Contrast-enhanced Sonography to Diagnose Malignant or Benign Tumors” by Pascarenco Ofelia et al.

The chief editor expresses her concern as to the allegations of plagiarism disseminated on a large field of personal e-mails, some of them accessed without permission and thus abused, as well as on certain political sites. The dissemination was not only regional, but national, and when it was immediately spread on the internet, the damage could only be figured out.
The allegations regarded some articles previously published since 2010 in our journal. It is our conviction that prior to taking such actions, the journal should be officially informed. Thus we would have had the opportunity to analyze the issues.
The allegations were viciously and falsely fathered consecutively by a character who styled himself as a prominent researcher and voluntary justice maker, further intoxica-ting the net.
The electronic format of the journal was used without permission. [More]

Recently, in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) management, other goals have been advocated, such as improving a patient’s quality of life, reducing hospitalization and surgery, and mucosal healing. In the last 2–3 years, mucosal healing is the final and most important goal in IBD therapy.
The means to achieve these goals may differ depending on the clinical presentation. Similar to the heterogeneity of clinical presentation, the natural history of IBD is equally diverse and the ideal is to have tools to aid in the prediction of a severe disease course versus a more indolent type of disease, so that a more aggressive therapeutic approach can be instituted earlier instead of a more graduated approach [1,2].
Clinical parameters, largely derived from retrospective studies that predict a more aggressive disease course, include a younger age of disease onset, active smoking, extensive small bowel disease, deep colonic ulcers, perianal disease, and an initial need for corticosteroids [3,4,5].
The standard therapies for IBD available to a clinician include 5-aminosalicylates, sulfasalazine and mesalazine, corticosteroids, immunosuppressive agents, and monoclonal antibodies (MAbs), so called biologic agents. [More]

When published in 2006, the RIFLE criteria filled the gap for the failing definition of acute kidney injury [1]. The criteria were scheduled to be evaluated. According to the authors who used these criteria in assessing renal impairment, acute kidney injury (AKI) occurred in 67% of ICU (intensive care unit) admissions, with maximum RIFLE class R and F in 12% and 28% respectively. They warned as to the risk of in hospital mortality compared to those who did not pass class R. Events happened in a general ICU. Later, Bagshaw et al retrospectively studied the fate of the patients admitted in 57 New Zealand adult ICUs including over 120,000 critically ill patients, of which 27.8% had a primary diagnosis of sepsis. They concluded that compared to the RIFLE criteria, the AKIN criteria were unable ”to improve the sensitivity, robustness and predictive ability of the definition and classification of AKI in the first 24 hours after admission to ICU” [2].[More]