Background and Objectives: Cigarette smoking among the youth population has increased significantly in developing countries, including Bosnia and Herzegovina. However, no extant literature assesses the prevalence of tobacco use, nor identifies factors associated with smoking. This study determined the prevalence of cigarette smoking among a specific cohort of students and assessed factors related to tobacco use in this population. Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional study included 1200 students at all faculties of Banja Luka University. Data were collected from questionnaires adapted from the Global Youth Tobacco Survey (GYTS) and the Global Health Professional Student Survey (GHPSS) standardized questionnaires and were analyzed using descriptive statistics, Pearson’s χ2 test, and logistic regression. Results: When the prevalence of cigarette smoking within the last thirty days was recorded, we found that 34.1% of students smoked within this period. Nearly three-quarters (74.9%) of the student population had smoked or experimented with cigarette smoking. However, medical students were 27.2% less likely to smoke than their counterparts from other faculties. Overall, 87% of all students were aware of the harmful effects of cigarette smoking, 79% were aware of the harmful effects of secondhand smoke, and 65% reported that it was difficult to quit. Increased spending of personal money was associated with a higher probability of smoking, while exposure to secondhand smoke increased the odds of smoking by 62%. Conclusion: Policies, strategies, and action plans should be introduced in order to reduce the prevalence of smoking among university students and to create a smoke-free environment at the various universities involved.

Tobacco smoking is a mental and behavioral disease. It causes significant pathology and premature death in more than seven million individuals a year around the globe. Because smoking is such important public health issue, the general public will benefit from targeted preventive strategies. Medical doctors have a vital role in smoking cessation of their patients. Non-smokers are more successful in this role than chronic smokers. Governmental regulation on smoking, as well as strict no-smoke policy in hospitals and university campuses will help not only medical students, other health workers and the general public to quit smoking and contribute to the general good health of this population. The aim of this comment is to analyse the current smoking habits of physicians and medical students and presents policies and other help to the medical students to stop tobacco smoking.

Let me explain the principle of bioassay. It is an analytical method for determination of the relative strength (concentration or potency) of a substance by comparing its effect on a test organism (living animal, cells or tissues) with that of a standard preparation. Bioassays are used in pharmacology mainly to determine the concentrations of hormones or drugs, eg biologically active peptides, acetylcholine, catecholamines, prostaglandins, histamine and prostacyclin. However, there are other forms of bioassay in which one can use isolated tissues and determine actions of their nerves, such as the nerve to the diaphragm from rats. Bioassays may also be done in vivo in individual humans. The assessment of drug effects in humans is designated by clinical pharmacologists as a clinical trial. Such trials often require hundreds or sometimes thousands of patients in order to test efficacy and safety of any new drug before it can be marketed. If the human investigations produce unexpected results, quite different of those obtained in the animal experiments the trials must be redesigned, to examine why and how this occurred. There are many examples of how such discoveries resulted in new clinically useful medications (eg, discovery antihypertensive effect of beta-adrenergic blocking agents).6 Accordingly, the pharmacologists have the bioassays, as a tool, which help them in the discovery process. I wrote on the renowned pharmacologist Professor Ervin G Erdös and his scientific opus in my reminiscence article written on the occasion of his death in 2019.1 When I attended the Fourth International Congress in Pharmacology in Basel in 1969, Dr Ervin G Erdös invited me to join his laboratory. Thus, in April 1970, I arrived in Oklahoma City as a Fulbright Fellow to work with him for two years. Later on, as a visiting scientist I frequently worked in his research laboratories in Dallas and Chicago and we shared research interests through visits across the Atlantic between the former Yugoslavia and the United States.2, 3

Introduction. Combustible tobacco smoking accounts for nearly 30% of all cancer deaths in the United States of America and about 7 million deaths worldwide each year. Nowadays, e-cigarettes are increasingly used, especially among young people, but nicotine addiction that develops by such smoking easily converts to smoking combustible tobacco. Therefore, public health efforts must be directed to the prevention of initiation of smoking all nicotine-containing products. Role of Physicians. Medical doctors are very influential in smoking-related changes in local society, especially those who work in primary care, and they have an important role in both prevention and cessation of tobacco smoking. Tobacco smoking should be eliminated among medical doctors, yet many of them still smoke. The lowest percentage of smoking among physicians is in Oceania and North America (less than 11%) and the highest in Eurasia (25%). Smoking prevalence among medical students is higher than 35% in Georgia, Greece, Spain, and Italy, but less than 5% in the United States of America and Australia. In Serbia, 23% of physicians smoke. The age of physicians does not affect the number of smokers, but gender has a significant effect; women smoke less than men. Smoking Prevention and Cessation. Education about the effects of combustible tobacco smoking is a critical issue for successful smoking prevention and cessation; the best way is to provide educational programs on smoking at medical schools by introducing a mandatory course on combustible tobacco smoking at the beginning of the first year of study, especially in societies with a large percentage of smokers. Conclusion. In this paper, we showed how smoking can be eliminated among physicians and how they can affect the patients, public health policies, and antismoking campaigns.

Despite its well known harmful effects on health, tobacco use is widespread throughout the world. Approximately one third of the global population become smokers at the age of 15 years or more. The prevalence of smoking between genders is lessening. Earlier, men used to smoke three to four times more than women globally. The nicotine content of cigarette is small (10 to 12 mg) and a smoker inhales about 1.1 to 1.8 mg of nicotine from each cigarette smoked to its entire length; this plant alkaloid stimulates the central nervous system, causes either ganglionic stimulation in low doses or ganglionic blockade in high doses, and smokers can develop a moderate to heavy physical dependence. Among other numerous substances, several are cancerogenic, and about 98 percent of lung cancer deaths are caused due to tobacco smoke. Nicotine addiction is often more severe than alcohol addiction. Smoking also may complicate anesthetic management, and passive smoking increases the rate of perioperative airway complications in the children of smokers, too. Preoperative abstinence from tobacco is required for surgical patients and it offers an opportunity for smokers to quit permanently. Physicians have an important role in helping smokers to quit tobacco or e-cigarettes, but if a doctor is a smoker himself, his antismoking influence may be deficient. Since a significant percentage of medical students are smokers, it is worth influencing them to stop the habit. The best way is to introduce tobacco modules, stimulating students to participate in anti-smoking campaigns, offer non-smoking hospitals, non-smoking university campuses, non-smoking dormitories, and to provide medical assistance to student smokers who wish to quit.

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This article should be cited as follows: Igić R. Pharmacologist's view of the new corona virus. Scr Med 2020;51(1):6-8. Despite many advances in the prevention and treatment of infectious diseases, the global spread of infections is accelerated by close contact among concentrated populations. A pandemic caused by a new type of coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) continues to spread across the globe. This new disease attributed to COVID-19 emerged a century after the Spanish flu pandemic, which affected one-third of the world's population, killing more than 50 million people.1 The disease, caused by the H1N1 virus, has been around for less than two years and it is still unclear what contributed to its termination; possibly a mutation of the virus reduced its viral strength. Since information about biological sciences and human medicine is far more advanced today than at the beginning of the 20th century, it is expected that the current pandemic will be contained, regardless of the potential for viral mutation. Scientists and doctors now face an urgent task how to treat numerous sick people and stop the spread of this infection. The pandemic urgently requires identification of preventive measures, along with optimum means of diagnosis and treatment and data on dissemination of the infection, duration of incubation, clinical features of the disease, along with the best means of diagnosis and treatment for a very large number of people, and ultimately the long lasting consequences of the disease. In addition, we must identify pathways for the spread of the virus, its persistence on various surfaces and means of its inactivation.2