Cost-containment measures in healthcare provision include the implementation of therapeutic and generic drug substitution strategies in patients whose condition is already well controlled with pharmacotherapy. Treatment for hypertension is frequently targeted for such measures. However, drug acquisition costs are only part of the cost-effectiveness equation, and a variety of other factors need ...

BACKGROUND Sublingual buprenorphine is used as a substitution drug in heroin addicts. Although buprenorphine inhibits mitochondrial function at high concentrations in experimental animals, these effects should not occur after therapeutic sublingual doses, which give very low plasma concentrations. CASE REPORTS We report four cases of former heroin addicts infected with hepatitis C virus and p...

generate recursively the infinite Prouhet-Thue-Morse word 0110100110010110 and Fibonacci word 01001010010010100101, respectively [1]. What can be said about the entropy (loosely, the amount of disorder) if we introduce some randomness into such definitions? If [2, 3] ⎨⎩ 0→ 1⁄2 01 with probability 12 10 with probability 12 1→ 0 with independence assumed throughout, then the set of possi...

Two new series of substitution tilings are introduced in which the tiles appear in infinitely many orientations. It is shown that several properties of the well-known pinwheel tiling do also hold for these new examples, and, in fact, for all substitution tilings showing tiles in infinitely many orientations. Dedicated to my teacher Ludwig Danzer on the occasion of his 80th birthday

Background: Natural coumarins group, a principal member of the benzopyrone family, is one naturally occurring substances obtained ordinarily from plant origins, with antibacterial, anticoagulant, antihypertensive, anticancer, antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and many other medicinal potentials. Because are found in nuts, seeds, fruits, vegetables, tea, coffee, wine, average person consumes signi...

BACKGROUND Immunoadsorption (IA) and subsequent immunoglobulin (Ig) G substitution represent an additional therapeutic approach in dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM). It remains to be elucidated whether this treatment modulates myocardial inflammation, which is possibly a causal factor of ventricular dysfunction. METHODS AND RESULTS From 25 DCM patients (EF <30%), 12 patients were randomized for IA...

Heroin abuse is an international problem with which all countries must continually cope. Many countries have implemented heroin substitution therapy as an effective means of decreasing illicit heroin use, crime, HIV risk, and death, and in improving employment and social adjustment. Although methadone is the most commonly used medication for heroin substitution, other agonists in current use in...

Large cancer genome sequencing initiatives have led to the identification of cancer driver genes based on signals of positive selection in somatic mutation data. Additionally, the identification of purifying (negative) selection has the potential to identify essential genes that may be of therapeutic interest. The most widely used way of quantifying selection pressures in protein-coding genes i...

BACKGROUND There are concerns that proton pump inhibitors (PPI) are being over prescribed in both primary and secondary care. This study aims to establish potential cost savings in a community drug scheme for a one year period according to published clinical and cost-effective guidelines for PPI prescribing. METHODS Retrospective population-based cohort study in the Republic of Ireland using ...

Ubiquitous interaction places the user in the centre of dynamic configurations of technology, where work not necessarily is performed through a single personal computer, but supported by a multiplicity of technologies and physical devices. This paper presents an activity-theoretically based framework for analyzing ubiquitous substitution, i.e. a set of mediators that are or can be continuously ...