THE WORST RESEARCH EVER FOUND IN HUMAN HISTORY: LIFE DESTROYER

For drugs that have a narrow therapeutic margin in their concentration-effect profile, blood concentration measurements can be an invaluable guide to the individualization of dosage regimens. For clinicians involved in therapeutic drug monitoring, background knowledge of basic pharmacokinetics relat …

Newly marketed drugs in the UK are marked with a black triangle, indicating that doctors should report all adverse drug reactions associated with them to the Committee on Safety of Medicines (CSM). However, under-reporting of adverse reactions is frequent. Our aim was to establish what types of adve …

Iontophoresis is the application of a small electric current to enhance the transport of both charged and polar, neutral compounds across the skin. Manipulation of either the total charge delivered and/or certain electrode formulation parameters allows control of electromigration and electroosmosis, …

Monolithic columns have slowly been applied to HPLC methods for clinical chemistry testing in the last 10 years. The application areas include therapeutic drug monitoring, drugs of abuse, vitamins, porphyrins, and steroids. In comparison with conventional particulate columns, the monolithic columns …

The state-of-the-art in two new ambient ionization methods for mass spectrometry, desorption electrospray ionization (DESI) and paper spray (PS), is described and their utility is illustrated with new studies on tissue imaging and biofluid analysis. DESI is an ambient ionization method that can be p …

Therapeutic drug monitoring of critical dose immunosuppressant drugs is established clinical practice and there are similar good reasons to monitor antiretrovirals. The aim of this article is to review the recent literature (last five years), with particular reference to the use of liquid chromatogr …

Sub-optimal exposure to antimicrobial therapy is associated with poor patient outcomes and the development of antimicrobial resistance. Mechanisms for optimizing the concentration of a drug within the individual patient are under development. However, several barriers remain in realizing true indivi …

Drugs are bound to various serum proteins in different degrees and only unbound or free drug is pharmacologically active. Although free drug concentration can be estimated from total concentration, for strongly bound drugs, prediction of free level is not always possible. Conditions like uremia, liv …

Electrical impedance tomography (EIT) was adapted to monitor drug release three-dimensionally as a function of time. EIT is an electrical imaging modality in which the three-dimensional conductivity distribution inside an object is computed based on electrical measurements from the boundaries. Here, …

To promptly identify and evaluate liver safety events, an evidence-based liver safety system was created for global Phase I-III clinical trials. The goals of this system included improving clinical trial subject safety, expanding information on liver safety events, and improving data quality across …

Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) is an ultrasensitive analytical technique with molecular specificity, making it an ideal candidate for therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM). However, in critical diagnostic media including blood, nonspecific protein adsorption coupled with weak surface affinit …

Treatment individualisation, an old concept renovated by the progress of analytical techniques and the advent of pharmacogenetics, aims at optimizing the usage of existing drugs by adjusting the nature and dose of anticancer agents to each patient, based on genetic, physiological and pathological cr …

Pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamics (PK/PD) modelling and dosage individualisation methods based on mathematical and statistical criteria will contribute in improving pharmacologic treatment in critically ill patients. Moreover, substantial effort will be necessary to integrate pharmacogenomics criteri …

Large (10 × 10 cm) sheets of surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) active polymer have been prepared by stabilising metal nanoparticle aggregates within dry hydroxyethylcellulose (HEC) films. In these films the aggregates are protected by the polymer matrix during storage but in use they are re …

The concept of personalized medicine is related to the development of new sensitive, precise and accurate analytical methods for therapeutic drug monitoring. In this article a rapid, sensitive and specific method was developed for the quantification of aliskiren, losartan, valsartan and hydrochlorot …

Although geriatric patients are the major recipients of drugs, most research during drug development is conducted in healthy younger adults. Safe and effective drug therapy in the elderly requires an understanding of both drug disposition and response in older individuals. One of the major issues in …

Population pharmacokinetic and dynamic modeling is often employed to analyze data of steady-state trough serum digoxin concentrations in the course of what is frequently regarded as routine therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM). Such a monitoring protocol is extremely uninformative. It permits only the …

Neurological disorders affect the lifestyle and the living conditions of a patient. Virtual Reality is a technology that may be used to simulate various types of tasks in a computerized environment guiding the patient and help on rehabilitation. This review try to answer how Virtual Reality technolo …

User interfaces are important to facilitate easy learning and operating with an IT application especially in the medical world. An easy to use interface has to be simple and to customize the user needs and mode of operation. The technology in the background is an important tool to accomplish this. T …

Adaptive user interfaces (AUIs) can increase the accessibility of interactive systems. They provide personalized display and interaction modes to fit individual user needs. Most AUI approaches rely on model-based development, which is considered relatively demanding. This paper explores strategies t …