Traditionally, schizophrenia was considered to be a severe psychiatric disorder, with a chronic course and an unfavorable outcome. Throughout history, there has been incidence of schizophrenia, roughly one percent of the population, consistently, in every culture. It is generally acknowledged that schizophrenia has multifactorial etiology, with multiple susceptibility genes interacting with environmental insults to yield a range of phenotypes in the schizophrenia spectrum. The discovery of antipsychotics in the 1950s revolutionized the treatment of schizophrenia and focused on the positive symptoms. By the 1960s, however, it became evident that the reduction in positive symptoms did not lead to recovery from schizophrenia and did not significantly improve the functional outcome. The advent of the novel antipsychotics during the last 15 years represents a significant improvement over the effectiveness of conventional antipsychotics. These agents are, however, not a magic bullet and bear their own side effects, such as weight gain, diabetes, hyperprolactinemia, and QTc prolongation. Nevertheless, at this point, they seem to be more effective and safer than the conventional antipsychotics. Moreover, advances in the treatment of schizophrenia have been and continue to be urgently needed.

Systemic chemotherapy has become the cornerstone of therapy for retinoblastoma. The advent of novel chemotherapeutic and antiangiogenesis agents together with new routes of drug administration including periocular, intravitreal and intra-ophthalmic artery injection will hopefully revolutionize the management of this sight-threatening and potentially fatal infantile ocular neoplasm.

Schizophrenia is a debilitating illness, rating as one of the leading causes of lost years of quality of life. The illness imposes a disproportionate burden on patients and their families, healthcare systems and society. Pharmacological management is the cornerstone of treatment of schizophrenia, and antipsychotics, both first generation of antipsychotics and second generation of antipsychotics, are efficacious in reducing levels of psychopathology in acute episodes of schizophrenia. Clearly a need for innovative treatment strategies in schizophrenia that will ensure increased effectiveness against negative symptoms and cognitive dysfunction dysfunction. Therefore, in majority of cases polypharmacy is one of the effective approaches. This review focused on polypharmacy in the treatment of schizophrenia and in particular negative symptoms.

Ophthalmic Research Center, Labbafinejad Medical Center, Tehran, Iran Recent developments in pharmacotherapy for retinal disorders may be considered as a turning point in ophthalmology. The introduction of new therapies for devastating conditions such as age-related macular degeneration (AMD), the main cause of irreversible blindness in the elderly, stemmed from the tremendous work by Folkman and colleagues who identified the pivotal role of the vascular endothelial grow factor (VEGF) in angiogenesis. Later it was revealed that among the different subtypes of vascular endothelial grow factor, VEGF-A plays a key role in inducing angiogenesis in neovascular AMD.