FORMULATION AND EVALUATION OF CONTROLLED POROSITY OSMOTIC PUMP TABLETS OF GLIMEPIRIDE

A Controlled porosity of the membrane is accomplished by the use of pore former. The usual dose of glimepiride was 4 mg to be taken twice daily. The plasma half life of glimepiride was 5 h. Hence, glimepiride was chosen as a model drug with an aim to develop a controlled release system for 24 h. Sodium chloride was use as osmogent. Cellulose acetate was used as the semi permeable membrane. The porous osmotic pump contains pore forming water-soluble additive (Poly ethylene glycol 400) in the coating membrane which after coming in contact with water, dissolve, resulting in an in situ formation of microporous structure. The effect of different formulation variables, namely, ratio of drug to osmogent, membrane weight gain and concentration of pore former on the in vitro release was studied using 23 full factorial design. The effect of pH and agitation intensity on drug release was also studied. It was found that drug release rate increased with the amount of osmogent because of increased water uptake. Drug release was inversely proportional to membrane weight gain. Surface plot is also presented to graphically represent the effect of independent variables on t90. Optimized formulation was found to release above 90% of glimepiride at a zero order rate for 24 h

International Nosocomial Infection Control Consortiu (INICC) report, data summary of 43 countries for 2007-2012. Device-associated module

We report the results of an International Nosocomial Infection Control Consortium (INICC) surveillance study from January 2007-December 2012 in 503 intensive care units (ICUs) in Latin America, Asia, Africa, and Europe. During the 6-year study using the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) U.S. National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN) definitions for device-associated health care–associated infection (DA-HAI), we collected prospective data from 605,310 patients hospitalized in the INICC's ICUs for an aggregate of 3,338,396 days. Although device utilization in the INICC's ICUs was similar to that reported from ICUs in the U.S. in the CDC's NHSN, rates of device-associated nosocomial infection were higher in the ICUs of the INICC hospitals: the pooled rate of central line–associated bloodstream infection in the INICC's ICUs, 4.9 per 1,000 central line days, is nearly 5-fold higher than the 0.9 per 1,000 central line days reported from comparable U.S. ICUs. The overall rate of ventilator-associated pneumonia was also higher (16.8 vs 1.1 per 1,000 ventilator days) as was the rate of catheter-associated urinary tract infection (5.5 vs 1.3 per 1,000 catheter days). Frequencies of resistance of Pseudomonas isolates to amikacin (42.8% vs 10%) and imipenem (42.4% vs 26.1%) and Klebsiella pneumoniae isolates to ceftazidime (71.2% vs 28.8%) and imipenem (19.6% vs 12.8%) were also higher in the INICC's ICUs compared with the ICUs of the CDC's NHSN