OBJECTIVES To study the prevalence of drug non-adherence among Chinese elderly people and its associated risk factors. DESIGN Cross-sectional survey. SETTING Medical and Geriatrics specialist out-patient clinic in a regional hospital. PATIENTS Elderly patients (> or =65 years) with chronic diseases requiring regular medications were selected by systematic sampling. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES...

Gastroretentive dosage forms (GRDF) has received significant interest in the past few decades as they can improve the limitation of most conventional and oral controlled release drug delivery system related to fast gastric-emptying time. An optimum GRDF system can be defined as a system which retains in the stomach for a sufficient time interval against all the physiological barriers, releases ...

OBJECTIVE To compare advice on dosage adjustment for renal impairment provided by four commonly used secondary pharmacotherapeutic sources. DESIGN Systematic comparison of the definitions of renal impairment, recommendations for dosage adjustment, and the evidence in support of these recommendations in four information sources. DATA SOURCES British National Formulary, Martindale: the Comple...

Background: Fluid resuscitation is the mainstay of treatment to counteract massive plasma leakage in dengue shock syndrome. We aimed to determine the differences in clinical outcomes and hemodynamic parameters of children with dengue shock syndrome post restrictive and liberal fluid resuscitation.  Materials and Methods: A retrospective observational study of pediatric patients who were betwee...

In order to avoid using cytotoxic drugs and to minimize prednisolone side effects in frequent relapsing or steroid-dependent idiopathic nephrotic syndrome, 35 patients, 3 to 15 (mean= 8.1) years of age, were studied. While in remission for at least 6 weeks, the dose of prednisolone was reduced to 0.1-0.37 (mean= 0.23) mg/kg/day as a single dose for 12 to 72 (mean= 27.6) months. It was follo...

When dealing with a regular (fixed-support) one-parameter distribution, the corresponding maximum-likelihood estimator (MLE) is, to good approximation, normally distributed. But, when support boundaries are functions of parameter, finding approximation for sampling distribution MLE (needed construct an accurate confidence interval parameter’s true value) may get very challenging. We demonstrate...

Discourse markers can clearly indicate the organization of discourse, remind the hearer of the preceding and the following contents, and express clearly the concrete speech acts. The aims of this study are to explore the relationship between the discourse-marker-based model and listening comprehension as well as the different effects of such a kind of instruction on liberal arts and science stu...

This paper starts from four observations: (1) voter turnout is declining in established democracies; (2) low turnout means socio-economically unequal turnout; (3) compulsory voting is an effective means to increase turnout; (4) even low-turnout countries, however, have neither introduced nor even contemplated a legal obligation to vote. A closer look at the arguments against compulsory voting s...

Assessing the potential for a new drug to cause life-threatening arrhythmias is now an integral component of premarketing safety assessment. International Conference on Harmonization of Technical Requirements for Registration of Pharmaceuticals for Human Use Guideline (ICH) E14 recommends the "Thorough QT Study" (TQT) to assess clinical QT risk. Such a study calls for careful evaluation of drug...