Editorial

Dear colleagues,

Hereby, new 11th issue of SEEMEDJ is presented to you. This issue brings 14 articles with main topic of arterial hypertension. Arterial hypertension is leading cardiovascular disease but also a risk factor for other cardiovascular and cerebrovascular disease and is major public health problem due to high prevalence. Thus, this issue of SEEMEDJ is co-edited with member of Croatian Academy of Science, prof Bojan Jelaković. Topics covered in present issue are hypertension management with SGLT2 (e.g. invited review of Bilić-Čurčić et al), articles that assessed comorbidities and outcomes of arterial hypertension, particularly in relation to COVID-19, still actual topic (articles by Gvozdanović et al and Bukal et al). Several reviews address other topic related to arterial hypertension, such as effects of anxiety, depression and antidepressant use on blood pressure by Ivanušić-Pejić et al, and relationship dehydroepiandrosterone sulfate and arterial hypertension (Jug et al) and new markers for hypertension and cardiovascular diseases, non-coding parts miRNAa (Kolobarić N and Drenjančević I). Adeleke’s and co-workers presented a study on relationship between alcohol use and patterns of blood-pressure change due to examination stress among university academic stuff.  In relation to world and national campaigns for dietary salt intake reduction is intriguiging question if consumption of iodine is to high (elaborated by Vasiljev et al). Lack of physical activity is also important contributing factor for bad hypertension outcomes. On the other hand, physical activity is necessary to preserve functional ability of elderly, which is studied by Bilajac et al. Kurup et al investigated transfusion transmissible infections among blood donors in the National Blood Transfusion Service in Guyana. Mišković et al reviewed relationship of iron deficiency and recurrent aphtous stomatitis, while, Liović-Milec et al. presented their work on transient corneal edema after phacoemulsification, demonstrating that older patients, higher grade of NO and amount of energy consumed during procedure are predictive factors for severity corneal edema. During intramuscular vaccine injections aspiration has always been performed, to ensure that the needle does not puncture one of the blood vessels. If lack of this simple procedure is related to side effects of vaccination (against COVID-19, for example) is reviewed by Kajan et al. Finally, Slivšek and co-authors introduce to us a concept of deep ecology.

We are happy to inform our potential authors that SEEMEDJ has been included to another citation base: OAJI- Open Academic Journal Index and also pending to Cabell’s database, thus widening our accessibility to readers.

The art work at the cover page is a painting – a collage of Osijek artist Branimir Kusik.

I hope that readers will find relevant published articles for their work. On a behalf of editorial board and my own, I warmly greet our readers and invite them to join us in the endeavor of publishing own scientific work in SEEMEDJ.

Ines Drenjančević, MD, PhD
Editor-in-Chief
Southeastern European Medical Journal (SEEMEDJ)