BACKGROUND The primary goal of pharmaceutical advertisements is to convince physicians to prescribe the manufacturer's product. We sought to determine what materials are cited in support of claims in pharmaceutical ads and medical research articles, and whether health care professionals seeking to verify the claims could obtain these references. METHODS We reviewed 438 unique ads from the 199...

Objectives To assess the completeness of reporting of sample size determinations in unpublished research protocols and to develop guidance for research ethics committees and for statisticians advising these committees. Design Review of original research protocols. Study selection Unpublished research protocols for phase IIb, III, and IV randomised clinical trials of investigational medicinal pr...

In the field of pharmaceutical research, injectable treatment therapy is currently one of the most highly examined methods of drug delivery. The continuation of this research is highly dependent on knowledge of fluid properties, specifically loss and storage modulus. Most drugs in the developmental stages of this method are extremely expensive and limited in quantity. Currently, devices that me...

the open access (oa) to scholarly articles published in journals, magazines and other literature sources is extremely useful to pharmacy students, teachers, research scholars, scientists and pharmacists to update their knowledge with recent changes in their fields of specialization. open access (oa) to scholarly articles is provided either directly from journal homepages by the publishers or fr...

BACKGROUND Xuesaitong Injection (XST) is one of the most commonly used medicines for treating acute cerebral infarction (ACI) in China. However, compared to the conventional therapy with western medicines (WM), the effectiveness and safety of XST as an adjuvant treatment for ACI needs to be systematically reviewed. METHODS Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) comparing XST & WM with WM for tre...

OBJECTIVE To identify and discuss the conceptions of pharmaceutical services in Brazilian Primary Health Care, according to different subjects. METHODS This study is part of the Pesquisa Nacional sobre Acesso, Utilização e Promoção do Uso Racional de Medicamentos - Serviços, 2015 (PNAUM - National Survey on Access, Use and Promotion of Rational Use of Medicines - Services, 2015), which is com...

The objectives of this article are to systematically review i) the extent of medicine use in postpartum women, and ii) the impact of maternal medicine use (excluding contraceptives and galactogogues) on breastfeeding outcomes (initiation and/or duration). PubMed, Medline (Ovid), Scopus (Elsevier), Cinahl (EBSCO), PsycINFO (Ovid), Embase (Ovid) and Web of Science (ISI) databases were searched to...

OBJECTIVE To investigate knowledge of medicines and sources of information about medicines among adolescents in Malta. METHODS A self-administered questionnaire was used to survey knowledge of medicines and information sources among adolescents attending secondary schools in Malta. A random stratified sample design generated a sample size of 514 students. Knowledge of medicines was investigat...

Sequential design is an adaptive design that allows for pre-mature termination of a trial due to efficacy or futility based on the interim analyses. The concept of sequential statistical methods was originally motivated by the need to obtain clinical benefits under certain economic constraints. That is for a trial for a positive results, early stopping ensures that a new drug product can exploi...