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Sepsis is a systemic inflammatory response syndrome in the presence of suspected or proven infection, and it may progress to or encompass organ failure (severe sepsis) and hypotension (septic shock). Clinicians possess an arsenal of supportive measures to combat severe sepsis and septic shock, and some success, albeit controversial, has been achieved by using low doses of corticosteroids or recombinant human activated protein C. However, a truly effective mediator-directed specific treatment has not been developed yet. Treatment with low doses of corticosteroids or with recombinant human activated protein C remains controversial and its success very limited. Attempts to treat shock by blocking LPS, TNF or IL-1 were unsuccessful, as were attempts to use interferon-gamma or granulocyte colony stimulating factor. Inhibiting nitric oxide synthases held promise but met with considerable difficulties. Scavenging excess nitric oxide or targeting molecules downstream of inducible nitric oxide synthase, such as soluble guanylate cyclase or potassium channels, might offer other alternatives.

Doing research when resources are severely limited will always be challenging. But by sharing resources, collaborating internationally as well as locally, developing sustainable research lines and optimizing study concept and design, researchers can significantly increase their research output and enhance its quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors reflect on the modest contribution of the Arab countries to the biomedical research literature leading to a small chance to be accepted by journals with a wider readership. They search all articles for each year from each Arab country from 1988-2007 in PubMed database to seek the visibility of the countries' research to the scientific community. The results reveal that the contribution of these countries to the worldwide PubMed literature grew from 0.38-0.6% between the said years.

The authors reflect on the establishment of "Libyan Journal of Medicine" (LJM) as an open access journal in 2006 in order to increase the visibility of regional research data in African and Arab countries. They state the improvement of the journal's scientific status since 2006. They say that LJM has received 250 manuscript submissions in 2012, which only 15% of the submitted papers were qualified for publication. They mention the move of LJM to continue its policy for high quality research.

Doing research when resources are severely limited will always be challenging. But by sharing resources, collaborating internationally as well as locally, developing sustainable research lines and optimizing study concept and design, researchers can significantly increase their research output and enhance its quality.