Antibiotics are a critically important part of paediatric medical care in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), where infectious diseases are the leading cause of child mortality. The World Health Organization estimates that >50% of all medicines are prescribed, dispensed or sold inappropriately and that half of all patients do not take their medicines correctly. Given the rising prevalence...

background and objectives: the expanding field of psychopharmacology is constantly seeking new and improved drugs to treat psychiatric disorders. although psychotropic drugs have had a remarkable impact in psychiatry, their utilization, effectiveness, and side effects in the in clinical practice need continuous study. the present study was thus designed to analyze the pattern of psychotropic dr...

BACKGROUND Almost 300 million people suffer from asthma, yet many in low- and middle-income countries have difficulty accessing essential asthma medicines. Availability, price and affordability of medicines are likely to affect access. Very few studies have included asthma medicines, particularly inhaled corticosteroids, in these countries. Reflections about international reference prices (IRPs...

A plethora of active compounds found in herbal medicines can serve as substrate for enzymes involved in the metabolism of xenobiotics. When a medicinal plant is co-administered with a conventional drug and little or no information is known about the pharmacokinetics of the plant metabolites, there is an increased risk of potential herb-drug interactions. Moreover, genetic polymorphisms in a pop...

OBJECTIVE In the last 30 years, concepts in pharmacology have moved from Essential Medicines (EM) to P-drugs via the Rational Use of Medicines (RUM), but no structured study has evaluated the level of understanding among working clinicians about these concepts. The present study is designed to fulfill that lacuna. MATERIALS AND METHODS A cross-sectional study was carried out in and around the...

Perspectives In recent years, pharmaceutical companies have introduced new expensive medicines, some of which target only small patient populations. For example, trastuzumab (Herceptin®), imatinib (Glivec®) and sofosbuvir (Sovaldi®) are high-priced medicines that have been shown to be effective and safe for treating cancer or hepatitis C, diseases for which no effective treatment existed previo...