Recent highly publicized withdrawals of drugs from the market because of safety concerns raise the question of whether these events are random failures or part of a recurring pattern. The inverse benefit law, inspired by Hart's inverse care law, states that the ratio of benefits to harms among patients taking new drugs tends to vary inversely with how extensively the drugs are marketed. The law...

Zolpidem, zopiclone, and zaleplon are commonly referred to as the "Z-drugs." The Z-drugs are nonbenzodiazepine hypnotics indicated for the short-term treatment of insomnia. Since becoming widely prescribed as sleep aids in the United States, they are increasingly being detected in a variety of forensic specimens. We present a comprehensive overview of the basic chemistry, pharmacodynamics, and ...

INTRODUCTION Primary healthcare centers (PHCCs) frequently are contacted for emergency reasons and are expected to provide basic and advanced life support during emergency situations. OBJECTIVES The aim of this study was to assess the availability of emergency equipment and the knowledge of the staff working in PHCCs. METHODS The survey was conducted in 21 PHCCs located in the rural city of...

Special considerations must be invoked when prescribing medications for the elderly. Although basic absorption is unchanged, many elderly patients are prone to chronic diarrhea or constipation, either of which may alter intestinal contact time and, thus, absorption. Concurrent use of such drugs as antacids or iron preparations may affect the availability of some compounds for absorption. The pr...

Although levodopa-related motor response complications remain challenging from a pathophysiological and therapeutic standpoint, major advances have been made in the last decade, supporting the development of several promising drugs. Eventually, these drugs may help us to prevent, alleviate, or even "deprime" these frequent and disabling complications. Knowledge of the basic mechanisms and hypot...

Obtaining drugs for use in basic and preclinical research has become increasingly difficult and in many instances is dependent upon the company's interest in the proposed research. In this paper, we describe a simple procedure for extracting the antidepressants sertraline, paroxetine, fluoxetine, venlafaxine, citalopram, escitalopram, duloxetine and atomoxetine from their readily available phar...

Medication overuse headache (MOH) is refractory headache with continuous and large amount use of drugs (analgesics, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, and triptans etc.) For treatment of MOH, overused drugs must be stopped as soon as possible. And preventive medication should be started at the same time. Also, the history of the patient's headache and social condition must be clarified. In ...

This article defines some of the terms used in chiral chemistry and some of the basic mechanistic issues that arise in stereochemistry in pharmacology. Attention is also drawn to the impact of stereochemistry on drug regulation and its significance for new drug development. The stereoselectivity of drugs is underpinned by the fact that the human body is essentially a chiral structure. The ratio...

INTRODUCTION Ayurveda is the earliest medical science having positive concept of health and is based upon certain basic principles of physical, chemical and biological sciences. These drugs are said to be potentially safe casting no side effects over synthetic drugs like antibiotics, analgesics, antihelminitics etc. Terminalia bellerica vern Hindi –Bahera, EnglishBeleric myrobalans have folklor...

Psychotropic drugs act by correcting the chemical changes associated with mental disorders and their symptoms. The use of such drugs in medical specialties other than psychiatry is not new and has been growing since a relationship has been demonstrated between mental states and the skin. Besides the so-called psychodermatoses, there are many skin diseases directly related to stress. For this re...