Ion energy distribution measurements in rf and pulsed dc plasma discharges

A commercial retarding field analyzer is used to measure the time-averaged ion energy distributions of impacting ions at the powered electrode in a 13.56 MHz driven, capacitively coupled, parallel plate discharge operated at low pressure. The study is carried out in argon discharges at 10 mTorr where the sheaths are assumed to be collisionless. The analyzer is mounted flush with the powered electrode surface where the impacting ion and electron energy distributions are measured for a range of discharge powers. A circuit model of the discharge, in combination with analytical solutions for the ion energy distribution in radio-frequency sheaths, is used to calculate other important plasma parameters from the measured energy distributions. Radio-frequency compensated Langmuir probe measurements provide a comparison with the retarding field analyzer data. The time-resolved capability of the retarding field analyzer is also demonstrated in a separate pulsed dc magnetron reactor. The analyzer is mounted on the floating substrate holder and ion energy distributions of the impinging ions on a growing film, with 100 ns time resolution, are measured through a pulse period of applied magnetron power, which are crucial for the control of the microstructure and properties of the deposited films

General practitioner practice-based pharmacist input to medicines optimisation in the UK: pragmatic, multicenter, randomised, controlled trial

BACKGROUND: Changing demographics across the UK has led to general practitioners (GPs) managing increasing numbers of older patients with multi-morbidity and resultant polypharmacy. Through government led initiatives within the National Health Service, an increasing number of GP practices employ pharmacist support. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the impact of a medicines optimisation intervention, delivered by GP practice-based pharmacists, to patients at risk of medication-related problems (MRPs), on patient outcomes and healthcare costs. METHODS: A multi-centre, randomised (normal care or pharmacist supplemented care) study in four regions of the UK, involving patients (n = 356) from eight GP practices, with a 6-month follow-up period. Participants were adult patients who were at risk of MRPs. RESULTS: Median number of MRPs per intervention patient were reduced at the third assessment, i.e. 3 to 0.5 (p < 0.001) in patients who received the full intervention schedule. Medication Appropriateness Index (MAI) scores were reduced (medications more appropriate) for the intervention group, but not for control group patients (8 [4-13] to 5 [0-11] vs 8 [3-13] to 7 [3-12], respectively; p = 0.001). Using the intention-to-treat (ITT) approach, the number of telephone consultations in intervention group patients was reduced and different from the control group (1 [0-3] to 1 [0-2] vs 1 [0-2] to 1 [0-3], p = 0.020). No significant differences between groups were, however, found in unplanned hospital admissions, length of hospital stay, number of A&E attendances or outpatient visits. The mean overall healthcare cost per intervention patient fell from £1041.7 ± 1446.7 to £859.1 ± 1235.2 (p = 0.032). Cost utility analysis showed an incremental cost per patient of - £229.0 (95% CI - 594.6, 128.2) and a mean QALY gained of 0.024 (95% CI - 0.021 to 0.065), i.e. indicative of a health status gain at a reduced cost (2016/2017). CONCLUSION: The pharmacist service was effective in reducing MRPs, inappropriateness of medications and telephone consultations in general practice in a cost-effective manner. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.Gov, NCT03241498. Registered 7 August 2017-Retrospectively registered, https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03241498

Geriatric pharmacotherapy : optimisation through integrated approach in the hospital setting

Since older patients are more vulnerable to adverse drug-related events, there is a need to ensure appropriate prescribing in these patients in order to prevent misuse, overuse and underuse of drugs. Different tools and strategies have been developed to reduce inappropriate prescribing; the available measures can be divided into medication assessment tools, and specific interventions to reduce inappropriate prescribing. Implicit criteria of inappropriate prescribing focus on appropriate dosing, search for drug-drug interactions, and increase adherence. Explicit criteria are consensus-based standards focusing on drugs and diseases and include lists of drugs to avoid in general or lists combining drugs with clinical data. These criteria take into consideration differences between patients, and stand for a medication review, by using a systematic approach. Different types of interventions exist in order to reduce inappropriate prescribing in older patients, such as: educational interventions, computerized decision support systems, pharmacist-based interventions, and geriatric assessment. The effects of these interventions have been studied, sometimes in a multifaceted approach combining different techniques, and all types seem to have positive effects on appropriateness of prescribing. Interdisciplinary teamwork within the integrative pharmaceutical care is important for improving of outcomes and safety of drug therapy. The pharmaceutical care process consists offour steps, which are cyclic for an individual patient. These steps are pharmaceutical anamnesis, medication review, design and follow-up of a pharmaceutical care plan. A standardized approach is necessary for the adequate detection and evaluation of drug-related problems. Furthermore, it is clear that drug therapy should be reviewed in-depth, by having full access to medical records, laboratory values and nursing notes. Although clinical pharmacists perform the pharmaceutical care process to manage the patient’s drug therapy in every day clinical practice, the physician takes the ultimate responsibility for the care of the patient in close collaboration with nurses

Dexamethasone potentiates the antiangiogenic activity of docetaxel in castration-resistant prostate cancer

We sought to characterise whether dexamethasone (DEX) may enhance tumour response to docetaxel in in vitro and in vivo models of metastatic prostate cancer (CaP). In vitro experiments conducted on PC3 and human bone marrow endothelial cells (hBMECs) determined that administration of DEX (10 nM) reduced constitutive nuclear factor-κB (NF-κB) activity, decreasing interleukin (IL)-8, CXCL1 and VEGF gene expression in PC3 cells. Dexamethasone also attenuated docetaxel-induced NF-κB and activator protein-1 transcription and reduced docetaxel-promoted expression/secretion of IL-8 and CXCL1 in PC3 and hBMECs. Although DEX failed to enhance docetaxel cytotoxicity on PC3 cells, DEX potentiated the antiangiogenic activity of docetaxel in vitro, further reducing vessel area and vessel length in developing endothelial tubes (P<0.05). Docetaxel had a potent antiangiogenic activity in the dorsal skin flap-implanted PC3 tumours in vivo. Small blood vessel formation was further suppressed in tumours co-treated with docetaxel and DEX, substantiated by an increased average vessel diameter and segment length and a decreased number of branch points in the residual tumour vasculature (P<0.001). Our data show that DEX potentiates the antiangiogenic activity of docetaxel, suggesting a putative mechanism for the palliative and survival benefits of these agents in metastatic CaP

UV radiation enhanced oxygen vacancy formation caused by the PLD plasma plume

Pulsed Laser Deposition is a commonly used non-equilibrium physical deposition technique for the growth of complex oxide thin films. A wide range of parameters is known to influence the properties of the used samples and thin films, especially the oxygen-vacancy concentration. One parameter has up to this point been neglected due to the challenges of separating its influence from the influence of the impinging species during growth: the UV-radiation of the plasma plume. We here present experiments enabled by a specially designed holder to allow a separation of these two influences. The influence of the UV-irradiation during pulsed laser deposition on the formation of oxygen-vacancies is investigated for the perovskite model material SrTiO3. The carrier concentration of UV-irradiated samples is nearly constant with depth and time. By contrast samples not exposed to the radiation of the plume show a depth dependence and a decrease in concentration over time. We reveal an increase in Ti-vacancy–oxygen-vacancy-complexes for UV irradiated samples, consistent with the different carrier concentrations. We find a UV enhanced oxygen-vacancy incorporation rate as responsible mechanism. We provide a complete picture of another influence parameter to be considered during pulsed laser depositions and unravel the mechanism behind persistent-photo-conductivity in SrTiO3

Memory for medication side effects in younger and older adults: the role of subjective and objective importance

Older adults often experience memory impairments, but can sometimes use selective processing and schematic support to remember important information. The current experiments investigate to what degree younger and healthy older adults remember medication side effects that were subjectively or objectively important to remember. Participants studied a list of common side effects, and rated how negative these effects were if they were to experience them, and were then given a free recall test. In Experiment 1, the severity of the side effects ranged from mild (e.g., itching) to severe (e.g., stroke), and in Experiment 2, certain side effects were indicated as critical to remember (i.e., “contact your doctor if you experience this”). There were no age differences in terms of free recall of the side effects, and older adults remembered more severe side effects relative to mild effects. However, older adults were less likely to recognize critical side effects on a later recognition test, relative to younger adults. The findings suggest that older adults can selectively remember medication side effects, but have difficulty identifying familiar but potentially critical side effects, and this has implications for monitoring medication use in older age

The effect of the COACH program (Continuity Of Appropriate pharmacotherapy, patient Counselling and information transfer in Healthcare) on readmission rates in a multicultural population of internal medicine patients

BACKGROUND: Medication errors occur frequently at points of transition in care. The key problems causing these medication errors are: incomplete and inappropriate medication reconciliation at hospital discharge (partly arising from inadequate medication reconciliation at admission), insufficient patient information (especially within a multicultural patient population) and insufficient communication to the next health care provider. Whether interventions aimed at the combination of these aspects indeed result in less discontinuity and associated harm is uncertain. Therefore the main objective of this study is to determine the effect of the COACH program (Continuity Of Appropriate pharmacotherapy, patient Counselling and information transfer in Healthcare) on readmission rates in patients discharged from the internal medicine department. METHODS/DESIGN: An experimental study is performed at the internal medicine ward of a general teaching hospital in Amsterdam, which serves a multicultural population. In this study the effects of the COACH program is compared with usual care using a pre-post study design. All patients being admitted with at least one prescribed drug intended for chronic use are included in the study unless they meet one of the following exclusion criteria: no informed consent, no medication intended for chronic use prescribed at discharge, death, transfer to another ward or hospital, discharge within 24 hours or out of office hours, discharge to a nursing home and no possibility to counsel the patient.The intervention consists of medication reconciliation, patient counselling and communication between the hospital and primary care healthcare providers.The following outcomes are measured: the primary outcome readmissions within six months after discharge and the secondary outcomes number of interventions, adherence, patient's attitude towards medicines, patient's satisfaction with medication information, costs, quality of life and finally satisfaction of general practitioners and community pharmacists.Interrupted time series analysis is used for data-analysis of the primary outcome. Descriptive statistics is performed for the secondary outcomes. An economic evaluation is performed according to the intention-to-treat principle. DISCUSSION: This study will be able to evaluate the clinical and cost impact of a comprehensive program on continuity of care and associated patient safety. TRIAL REGISTRATION: Dutch trial register: NTR151

Slow wave sleep and accelerated forgetting

We investigated whether the benefit of slow wave sleep (SWS) for memory consolidation typically observed in healthy individuals is disrupted in people with accelerated long-term forgetting (ALF) due to epilepsy. SWS is thought to play an active role in declarative memory in healthy individuals and, furthermore, electrographic epileptiform activity is often more prevalent during SWS than during wakefulness or other sleep stages. We studied the relationship between SWS and the benefit of sleep for memory retention using a word-pair associates task. In both the ALF and the healthy control groups, sleep conferred a memory benefit. However, the relationship between the amount of SWS and sleep-related memory benefits differed significantly between the groups. In healthy participants, the amount of SWS correlated positively with sleep-related memory benefits. In stark contrast, the more SWS, the smaller the sleep-related memory benefit in the ALF group. Therefore, contrary to its role in healthy people, SWS-associated brain activity appears to be deleterious for memory in patients with ALF