Current Issue : July - September Volume : 2018 Issue Number : 3 Articles : 5 Articles
Diabetes mellitus (DM) is a major health growing problem and an important cause of prolong ill health and early death. Each year more than 231,000 people in the United States and more than 396 million people worldwide die from diabetes and its complications. Drug utilization studies are important for the optimization of drug therapy and have received a great attention in recent years. The study of drug utilization or prescribing patterns is a component of medical audit, which seeks monitoring, evaluation and necessary modifications in the prescribing practices to achieve rational and cost-effective pharmacotherapy. The most useful way for evaluating medication use and to measure the degree of polypharmacy within the health care system is the usage of core indicators anticipated and validated by WHO. The present study aimed to evaluate the co morbidities and drug utilization in a tertiary care teaching hospital. It’s a prospective observational study undertaken for a period of 6 months in inpatient unit of a tertiary care Hospital. The study enrolled 255 patient prescriptions. A total of 240 patients had co-morbid conditions along with diabetes. Commonly seen co-morbid condition in the study was stroke followed by hypertension. The study has shown a higher percentage of insulin prescribing and insulin based therapy. The study shows irrational prescribing regarding drug utilization and disease management that affects the essential drug program and reflects the state of irrational drug prescribing pattern....
The interaction of the immune system with cancer is complex, but new approaches are\nresulting in exciting therapeutic benefits. In order to enhance the immune response to cancer, immune\ntherapies seek to either induce high avidity immune responses to tumour specific antigens or to\nconvert the tumour to a more pro-inflammatory microenvironment. Strategies, including vaccination,\noncolytic viruses, and adoptive cell transfer all seek to induce anti-tumour immunity. To overcome\nthe suppressive tumour microenvironment checkpoint inhibitors and modulators of regulatory\ncell populations have been investigated. This review summarizes the recent advances in immune\ntherapies and discusses the importance of combination therapies in the treatment of cancers....
Drug combinatorial therapy is a promising strategy for combating complex diseases due to\nits fewer side effects, lower toxicity and better efficacy. However, it is not feasible to determine all the\neffective drug combinations in the vast space of possible combinations given the increasing number\nof approved drugs in the market, since the experimental methods for identification of effective drug\ncombinations are both labor- and time-consuming. In this study, we conducted systematic analysis of\nvarious types of features to characterize pairs of drugs. These features included information about the\ntargets of the drugs, the pathway in which the target protein of a drug was involved in, side effects of\ndrugs, metabolic enzymes of the drugs, and drug transporters. The latter two features (metabolic\nenzymes and drug transporters) were related to the metabolism and transportation properties of\ndrugs, which were not analyzed or used in previous studies. Then, we devised a novel improved\nna�¯ve Bayesian algorithm to construct classification models to predict effective drug combinations by\nusing the individual types of features mentioned above. Our results indicated that the performance\nof our proposed method was indeed better than the na�¯ve Bayesian algorithm and other conventional\nclassification algorithms such as support vector machine and K-nearest neighbor....
Background. Self-medication, which is a form of self-care, is an important initial response to illness, and many illnesses can be\nsuccessfully treated at this stage. It is practiced by a considerable proportion of the population and is affected by sociodemographic\nand economic factors. This study was conducted to assess the practice of self-medication and associated factors in Limmu Genet�s\ntown households, Jimma Zone, Southwest Ethiopia. Methods and Materials. A community based cross-sectional study was done.\nSystematic sampling technique was used to select participants. Data was collected by face-to-face interviews by using structured\nquestionnaires. After checking the completeness, missing values, and coding of questionnaires, data was tabulated and calculated on\nSPSS version 20.0. Finally data was presented in tables, graphs frequency, percentage, and cross-tabulation with different variables.\nResult. In this study, both self-medication and the prevalence of diseases among households were 78.1%. That constituted any kind\nof illness reported by participants. Conclusion. Self-medication practice is common among community members regardless of\nbeing community based health insurance members. Therefore, it needs pertinent health education on legal prescriptions and use\nof medicines as well as strengthening the access of community based insurance....
This study investigated unlicensed drug outlets� practices for the management of malaria in the rural district of Butaleja, Uganda. A\nqualitative design using semistructured interviews was used. Interviews were recorded, translated, transcribed, and analyzed using\nthematic analysis.Atotal of 75 vendors, representing 85%of the outlets in the study area,were interviewed.Most of the vendorswere\nassociated with a drug shop type of outfit. About three-quarters reported having completed some level of postsecondary education,\nbut just one-tenth of the vendors had qualifications that made them eligible to apply for a license to operate a drug shop. While\nmost outlets stocked at least one type of antimalarial, only about one-quarter stocked an artemisinin-based combination therapy\n(ACT), one-quarter expressed a preference for ACTs, and less than one-tenth attested to firmly adhering to the national malaria\ntreatment guidelines on dispensing ACTs as the first-line option. In contrast, nine out of 10 vendors stocked quinine and well over\na third stocked antimalarials no longer recommended, such as chloroquine and sulphadoxine-pyrimethamine. Given the ongoing\ngap between the national malaria policy and unlicensed drug outlet practices, this study calls for greater engagement of unlicensed\nvendors to improve the management of childhood malaria....
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