CREATING A PROLONGED FORM OF ACETYLSALICYLIC ACID: AN EXPERIMENTAL APPROACH

Aim. The development of a prolonged form of acetylsalicylic acid (ASA) encapsulated into polymeric highly porous microcarriers using supercritical carbon dioxide and the subsequent study of ASA release kinetics in vitro and in vivo using high-performance liquid chromatographic (HPLC).Materials and methods. As polymeric carriers for ASA encapsulation amorphous D,L-polylactides (PLA) and polylactoglycolides (PLGA) of PURASORB PDL02 and PDLG7502 series (PURAC Biochem BV, Netherlands) were selected. The ASA encapsulation was performed using the PGSS (Particles from Gas Saturated Solutions) method of supercritical fl uid formation of microfi ne (20–50 μm) bioresorbable powders of aliphatic polyethers containing 10 wt.% ASA. The release kinetics of ASA from polymeric microparticles into saline solution as well as pharmacokinetic studies in vivo (rabbits) were registered by HPLC.Results. A method of quantitative determination of ASA and its main metabolite salicylic acid (SA) in model solution and blood plasma by HPLC-UV detection with enhanced sample preparation and selectivity was developed. The method’s analytical range without accounting for dilution was 0.05–5.0 μg/ml for model solution and 0.2–10.0 μg/ml for blood plasma; the degree of extraction of ASA SA from blood plasma – 95.8 and 98.1%, respectively. It was demonstrated that the amount of ASA released from PLA during the fi rst 4 h exceeds the mass of ASA released from PLGA by approximately 25% which may serve as a justifi cation for the selection of PLGA as a carrier for the creation of a prolonged form of ASA. Pharmacokinetic studies (rabbits, n = 3) demonstrated a gradual release of ASA from PLGA microparticles during 24 h after intramuscular implantation of encapsulated form of ASA at the dose of 10 mg/kg.Conclusion. Test samples of highly porous microfi ne powders of PLGA obtained by PGSS containing up to 10 wt.% ASA may serve as source prototypes for the development and creation on their basis of a prolonged form of ASA

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Not AvailableKoeda et al. (2014) published a review of fishes of the genus Pempheris of the Red Sea. They concluded that there are four species: P. adusta Bleeker, P. mangula Cuvier, P. nesogallica Cuvier, and a new species, P. tominagai. We show that the first three species they cite are not present in the Red Sea, as follows. (1) P. adusta is a western Pacific species (type locality Ambon), described only from the holotype, and without a dark border on the anal fin. Koeda et al. (2014) mistak-enly apply that name to P. flavicycla which is a widespread Indian Ocean species characterized by a prominent broad black border along the anal fin. Koeda et al. (2014) also redescribe P. adusta, using Indian Ocean specimens of P. flavicycla, despite the coloration difference and a 2.5% difference in the mtDNA sequence (COI) between Indian Ocean and W. Pa-cific populations. (2) P. mangula is a species from the east coast of India (type locality Visakhapatnam), clearly distinct in both gill-raker counts and a 1.1% sequence divergence in COI from its Red Sea relative P. rhomboidea. Pempheris man-gula is not found west of India, and Koeda et al. (2014) mistakenly use DNA from Oman and Madagascar to represent P. mangula, instead of genetic material available from the type locality. (3) Pempheris nesogallica (type locality Mauritius) is unknown from the Red Sea. Koeda et al. (2014) separate P. nesogallica from P. rhomboidea (their “P. mangula”) by eye size; we fail to find any difference (and they use their purported eye-size difference to erroneously rename one of the two syntypes of P. nesogallica as “P. mangula”). (4) Their new species P. tominagai is referred to as the Indian Ocean sister species of “P. schwenkii of the Pacific”; however, the type locality of P. schwenkii is the Batu Islands off the SW coast of Sumatra in the Indian Ocean. They mistakenly include specimens of a distant South African species as paratypes of P. tominagai. We have determined that P. tominagai is a valid species endemic to the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. They mis-identify one lot of P. rhomboidea in the collection of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem as their record of P. nesogallica from the Red Sea. They misidentify the specimen in their photograph of Fig. 1B as P. adusta and use it as material for their redescription of the species, but it is now shown to be a paratype of Pempheris bexillon Mooi & Randall, 2014. Addition-ally, they regard P. malabarica Cuvier as a junior synonym of P. molucca Cuvier, but the name P. molucca is based on a fanciful painting and is unavailable as a nomen dubium. They treat Pempheris russellii Day as a junior synonym of P. man-gula; however, it is distinct in having longer pectoral fins, a larger eye, and more gill rakers. Their key to the species of Pempheris of the Red Sea is incorrect. We present a new key and conclude that only three species of Pempheris are pres-ently known from the Red Sea: P. flavicycla, P. rhomboidea, and P. tominagai.Government of Canada via the Canadian Centre for DNA Barcoding, as well as from the Ontario Genomics Institute (2008-OGI-ICI-03), Genome Canada, the Ontario Ministry of Economic Development and Innovation, and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada