"Letting themselves go during care" - exploring patient autonomy during co-designed intrapartum care in a Beninese maternity ward.

Background: Patient autonomy is central to the provision of respectful maternity care. Enabling women to make decisions free of discrimination and coercion, and respecting their privacy and confidentiality can contribute to positive childbirth experiences. This study aimed to deepen the understanding of how patient autonomy is reflected through social practices during intrapartum care in Benin.

Methodological reflections on health system-oriented assessment of maternity care in 16 hospitals in sub-Saharan Africa: an embedded case study.

Health facility assessments (HFAs) assessing facilities' readiness to provide services are well-established. However, HFA questionnaires are typically quantitative and lack depth to understand systems in which health facilities operate-crucial to designing context-oriented interventions. We report lessons from a multiple embedded case study exploring the experiences of HFA data collectors in implementing a novel HFA tool developed using systems thinking approach.

Time-Resolved FRET-Based Assays to Characterize G Protein-Coupled Receptor Hetero-oligomer Pharmacology.

Although G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) oligomerization is a matter of debate, it has been shown that the nature of the GPCR partners within the oligomers can influence the pharmacological properties of the receptors. Therefore, finding specific ligands for homo- or hetero-oligomers opens new perspectives for drug discovery. However, no efficient experimental strategy to screen for such ligands existed yet.

From the Promiscuous Asenapine to Potent Fluorescent Ligands Acting at a Series of Aminergic G-Protein-Coupled Receptors.

Monoamine neurotransmitters such as serotonin, dopamine, histamine, and noradrenaline have important and varied physiological functions and similar chemical structures. Representing important pharmaceutical drug targets, the corresponding G-protein-coupled receptors (termed aminergic GPCRs) belong to the class of cell membrane receptors and share many levels of similarity as well. Given their pharmacological and structural closeness, one could hypothesize the possibility to derivatize a ubiquitous ligand to afford rapidly fluorescent probes for a large set of GPCRs to be used for instance in FRET-based binding assays.