Perfil de prescrição de antidepressivos e ansiolíticos numa amostra de utentes na farmácia comunitária: Avaliação do controlo da depressão/ansiedade

A depressão é a principal causa de incapacidade global, sendo também a principal causa de morte por suicídio. A ansiedade encontra-se em 6º lugar no ranking relativo às causas de incapacidade. Tratando-se de patologias fortemente associadas a incapacidade torna-se imperativo o adequado tratamento, bem como a monitorização da efetividade e segurança da terapêutica farmacológica instituída. Neste sentido, o Farmacêutico tem um papel importante em relação aos doentes com estas patologias, nomeadamente através da monitorização da terapêutica farmacológica (efetividade e segurança), adesão à terapêutica, transmissão de conhecimentos sobre a medicação, alteração de estilos de vida, comunicação e reconhecimento da tendência suicida. Desta forma, o principal objetivo do estudo consistiu na avaliação do perfil de prescrição de antidepressivos e ansiolíticos numa amostra de utentes em farmácia comunitária. Pretendeu-se também avaliar o controlo da depressão e ansiedade na referida amostra, bem como comparar o perfil de prescrição encontrado com as guidelines terapêuticas a nível nacional e internacional. Para tal, durante cerca de 3 meses, entrevistaram-se todos os utentes (maiores de 18 anos) da Farmácia Central de Mora que se apresentaram com prescrição médica de, pelo menos, um fármaco para o tratamento da depressão / ansiedade, e que aceitaram participar no estudo. Para a recolha de dados e para a avaliação do controlo recorreu-se a um questionário (construído para o efeito) e ao questionário HADS, respetivamente. Todos os participantes assinaram o seu consentimento informado. Obteve-se uma amostra de 56 utentes, na qual prevaleceu o género feminino e a média das idades foi 63,8 ± 1,64 anos. A maioria destes utentes apresenta apenas o nível básico de estudos e na amostra prevaleceu a situação profissional “reformado”. Concluiu-se que a subclasse onde se regista um maior consumo é nos derivados da benzodiazepina, seguindo-se, com uma frequência de consumo semelhante, a subclasse “outros antidepressivos”. Apesar do consumo de fármacos ansiolíticos e antidepressivos, existe uma grande percentagem de utentes com scores compatíveis com não controlo da depressão e/ou da ansiedadeDepression is the leading cause of global disability and is also the leading cause of death from suicide. Anxiety is in 6th place of the ranking regarding the causes of disability. Since these diseases often result in disability, appropriate treatment is crucial, as well as effectiveness and security screening of pharmacological treatment. Thus, the Pharmacist plays an important role towards people with these conditions, in particular through the pharmacologic treatment screening (effectiveness and security), therapeutics adherence, medication’s education, lifestyles implementation and suicidal tendency communication and identification. In this context, the aim of the study was the evaluation of the prescription profile of anxiolytic and antidepressant drugs in a sample of users in community pharmacy. It’s also intended to evaluate depression and anxiety’s control in this sample, as well as to compare the prescription profile found with national and international therapeutic guidelines. To this end, for about 3 months, the patients of Central’s Pharmacy, in Mora, (older than 18 years) who came up with a prescription of, at least, an anxiolytic / antidepressant drug, and that agreed to participate in this study, were interviewed. For data collection and for diseases control evaluation a questionnaire (constructed for this purpose) and the HADS questionnaire were used, respectively. All participants signed your informed consent. A sample of 56 patients was obtained, in which the female gender prevailed and the average age was 63,8 ± 1,64 years. Most of these patients have only the basic level of school education and, in the sample, the “retired” professional situation prevailed. From this study it was concluded that the subclass with the highest consumption is benzodiazepines derivatives, followed, with a similar frequency, by “other antidepressants” subclass. Despite anxiolytic and antidepressant drugs consumption, there is a large percentage of patients with scores compatible with non-control of depression and / or anxiety

SARS-CoV-2 introductions and early dynamics of the epidemic in Portugal

Genomic surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 in Portugal was rapidly implemented by the National Institute of Health in the early stages of the COVID-19 epidemic, in collaboration with more than 50 laboratories distributed nationwide. Methods By applying recent phylodynamic models that allow integration of individual-based travel history, we reconstructed and characterized the spatio-temporal dynamics of SARSCoV-2 introductions and early dissemination in Portugal. Results We detected at least 277 independent SARS-CoV-2 introductions, mostly from European countries (namely the United Kingdom, Spain, France, Italy, and Switzerland), which were consistent with the countries with the highest connectivity with Portugal. Although most introductions were estimated to have occurred during early March 2020, it is likely that SARS-CoV-2 was silently circulating in Portugal throughout February, before the first cases were confirmed. Conclusions Here we conclude that the earlier implementation of measures could have minimized the number of introductions and subsequent virus expansion in Portugal. This study lays the foundation for genomic epidemiology of SARS-CoV-2 in Portugal, and highlights the need for systematic and geographically-representative genomic surveillance.We gratefully acknowledge to Sara Hill and Nuno Faria (University of Oxford) and Joshua Quick and Nick Loman (University of Birmingham) for kindly providing us with the initial sets of Artic Network primers for NGS; Rafael Mamede (MRamirez team, IMM, Lisbon) for developing and sharing a bioinformatics script for sequence curation (https://github.com/rfm-targa/BioinfUtils); Philippe Lemey (KU Leuven) for providing guidance on the implementation of the phylodynamic models; Joshua L. Cherry (National Center for Biotechnology Information, National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health) for providing guidance with the subsampling strategies; and all authors, originating and submitting laboratories who have contributed genome data on GISAID (https://www.gisaid.org/) on which part of this research is based. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not reflect the view of the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Health and Human Services, or the United States government. This study is co-funded by Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia and Agência de Investigação Clínica e Inovação Biomédica (234_596874175) on behalf of the Research 4 COVID-19 call. Some infrastructural resources used in this study come from the GenomePT project (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-022184), supported by COMPETE 2020 - Operational Programme for Competitiveness and Internationalisation (POCI), Lisboa Portugal Regional Operational Programme (Lisboa2020), Algarve Portugal Regional Operational Programme (CRESC Algarve2020), under the PORTUGAL 2020 Partnership Agreement, through the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), and by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Characterisation of microbial attack on archaeological bone

As part of an EU funded project to investigate the factors influencing bone preservation in the archaeological record, more than 250 bones from 41 archaeological sites in five countries spanning four climatic regions were studied for diagenetic alteration. Sites were selected to cover a range of environmental conditions and archaeological contexts. Microscopic and physical (mercury intrusion porosimetry) analyses of these bones revealed that the majority (68%) had suffered microbial attack. Furthermore, significant differences were found between animal and human bone in both the state of preservation and the type of microbial attack present. These differences in preservation might result from differences in early taphonomy of the bones. © 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved