A capillary electrophoresis/mass spectrometry method for the simultaneous chiral analysis of enantiomers of methamphetamine (MA), amphetamine (AP), dimethylamphetamine (DMA), ephedrine (EP), norephedrine (NE) and methylephedrine (ME) in urine has been developed. The background electrolyte was 1 M formic acid (pH 1.7). Using 0.85 mM heptakis(2,6-diacethyl-6-sulfato)-beta-cyclodextrin as the chir...

MICs of ciprofloxacin, sparfloxacin, ofloxacin, amikacin and rifampicin were determined for 14 primary clinical isolates and three reference isolates of Mycobacterium ulcerans by modifying a standard agar dilution method for testing Mycobacterium tuberculosis sensitivity. All these antimicrobials were active against every isolate of M. ulcerans. Sparfloxacin exhibited the highest activity and o...

Sixty clinical isolates of M. tuberculosis, 24 susceptible and 36 resistant to conventional primary antituberculous drugs, were tested against four fluoroquinolones (ciprofloxacin, ofloxacin, pefloxacin and norfloxacin). Ofloxacin and ciprofloxacin were found to be the most active, with minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) of 0.6 mg/l or less to all strains tested. Strains resistant to isonia...

A total of 26 clinically diagnosed adult patients, with active untreated lepromatous leprosy, with a Bacteriological Index of 4+ or more, were admitted to the hospital of the Central Leprosy Teaching and Research institute, Chengalpattu, India, between 1989 and 1991. After prescribed investigations, the patients were randomly allocated in groups of 3 to 3 treatment regimens, namely: 1, clofazim...

The provision of pure enantiomers is of increasing importance not only for the pharmaceutical industry but also for agrochemistry and biotechnology. In general, there are two rival approaches to provide pure enantiomers. The "chiral" approach is based on developing an asymmetric synthesis of just one of the enantiomers, while the "racemic" approach is based on separating mixtures of the two ena...

The influence of ciprofloxacin, nalidixic acid, norfloxacin, novobiocin, and ofloxacin on elements of eucaryotic DNA replication was investigated in vitro. Each of the 4-quinolones, when present in amounts of more than 100 micrograms/ml, reversibly inhibited the DNA synthesis performed by the 95 DNA polymerase alpha primase complex from calf thymus. Novobiocin at 500 micrograms/ml or at higher ...

The efficacies of 40 mg of ofloxacin per kg/day given orally and 250 mg of penicillin per kg/day given intramuscularly, alone or in combination, were evaluated in the prevention of mortality of C3H/HeN female mice given 8.2 Gy of 60Co radiation. Mortalities were 51 of 60 mice (85%) in the control group, 46 of 60 mice (77%) among those treated with penicillin, 32 of 60 mice (53%) among those tre...

Nanotechnology has offered enormous improvement in field of therapeutics by means of designing of nano-carriers that can cross biological barriers and are able to target cellular reservoirs. The aim of the present investigation was to formulate and evaluate Niosomes, a synthetic microscopic non-ionic surfactant vesicles formed on the admixture of a non-ionic surfactant, cholesterol and phosphat...

BACKGROUND The rate of Helicobacter pylori (H.pylori) eradication in dyspeptic patients using bismuth- based triple therapy is low due to bacterial that are resistant to antibiotics. The results of recent studies regarding levofloxacin have been encouraging, but the high cost of treatment prevents its routine administration. We, therefore, performed the present double-blind clinical trial to co...

This work describes the sequential hydrolysis of bambuterol enantiomers and their monocarbamate metabolites (MONO) catalyzed by human butyrylcholinesterase (BChE) as well as the enzyme inhibition resulting from this process. Particular emphasis is given to the contribution given by MONO to the enzyme inhibition because it was not fully characterized in previous works. Bambuterol and MONO enanti...