Current Issue
A Word from the Guest Editor
Laboratory testing is an imperative and crucial tool in modern reproductive healthcare practice. Ensuring favorable pregnancy outcomes remains a major public health challenge. A series of intense physiological changes during pregnancy is necessary to ensure adequate fetal growth and development. Laboratory testing plays an essential role in monitoring physiological pregnancy, pregnancy complications risk assessment, and accurate and timely diagnosis and monitoring of pregnancy complications. Despite the various studies conducted in this field, the etiology and pathogenesis of pregnancy complications are not completely understood. Consequently, scientific and professional healthcare providers still face a lack of fully reliable biomarkers, as well as a lack of resources that would ensure adequate prevention and treatment of pregnancy complications. Moreover, as reproductive health extends before and beyond the years of reproduction, it is an important aspect of overall health and well-being during all life stages. In recent years, there has been a lot of focus on women's health related to menopause. Menopause is a physiological condition, but it is often accompanied by a poorer quality of life due to cognitive decline and increased risk for osteoporosis and cardiovascular disease development. Furthermore, reproductive healthcare includes issues related to reproductive endocrinology, infertility, inflammatory diseases and various kinds of benign and malignant tumors of the female and male reproductive system. Laboratory diagnostics play an important role in assessing overall reproductive health.
This special issue of Archives of Pharmacy entitled "The importance of laboratory testing in pregnancy and reproductive health improvement" includes four review articles and three research papers related to the most intriguing aspects of reproductive health, pregnancy complications, menopause, ovarian cancer and infertility. It will highlight recent advances and achievements in this field which are of importance to the scientific public. I am grateful to all the authors who accepted my invitation to engage in the creation of this special issue. Finally, I would like to thank the Archives of Pharmacy Editorial Board for their kind invitation to propose the theme for this issue of Archives of Pharmacy.
Guest Editor
Aleksandra Stefanović, PhD, Full Professor
University of Belgrade – Faculty of Pharmacy
Department of Medical Biochemistry