Участь фармацевтів в управлінні застосуванням ліків рослинного походження людьми похилого віку

Recent data indicate that the pharmaceutical market for herbal medicines continues to grow steadily, and this enables pharmacists to improve their professional skills in managing the treatment of the elderly with herbal medicines and identify potential problems associated with their use. Aim. To study the practice of using herbal medicines among elderly patients from the pharmacist’s point of view and identify specific recommendations of pharmacists in managing the use of herbal medicines. Materials and methods. A descriptive design study was conducted; the main research tool was a questionnaire for pharmacists. Results. Pharmacists’ responses indicate that the use of herbal medicines in the elderly is common, herbal preparations are used mainly for treating chronic diseases, and in most cases elderly patients associate the quality of treatment with the co-use of traditional medicines with herbal ones; often older patients also have false information about the requested herbal medicines. This means the need for pharmacists to monitor and supervise the use of herbal medicines by the elderly, special attention should be paid to the results of drug-herbal interactions and to regular updating of knowledge in the field of geriatric pharmaceutical care oriented to herbal therapy. Conclusions. Based on the results of the study, the problems associated with the use of herbal medicines in the elderly have been described, and some specific recommendations for pharmacists related to the treatment with herbal medicines in the elderly have been proposed.Дані останніх досліджень свідчать, що фармацевтичний ринок рослинних препаратів продовжує стабільно зростати, що дає можливість фармацевтам поліпшити свої професійні навички з моніторингу лікування старих людей ліками рослинного походження і виявити потенційні проблеми, пов’язані з їх застосуванням. Мета – розглянути практику використання рослинних препаратів серед літніх пацієнтів з погляду фармацевта й окреслити конкретні рекомендації фахівців щодо управління застосуванням рослинних лікарських засобів. Матеріали та методи. Проведено дослідження описового дизайну з використанням основного інструменту – анкети для фармацевтів. Результати дослідження. Відповіді фармацевтів свідчать про те, що застосування рослинних лікарських засобів літніми людьми є звичайним явищем. Пацієнти старшого віку використовують зазначені препарати здебільшого для лікування хронічних захворювань, а якість лікування пов’язують з одночасним застосуванням традиційних ліків і рослинних препаратів; також вони часто мають помилкову інформацію про рослинні препарати. Це визначає необхідність моніторингу та нагляду фармацевтів за використанням рослинних препаратів літніми людьми. Особливу увагу має бути приділено результатам взаємодії ліків і рослинних препаратів, а також регулярному оновленню знань в галузі геріатричної фармацевтичної допомоги, орієнтованої на лікування рослинними препаратами. Висновки. На підставі результатів дослідження описано проблеми, пов’язані із застосуванням літніми людьми лікарських засобів на травах, і запропоновано деякі конкретні рекомендації для фармацевтів, що стосуються лікування рослинними препаратами людей похилого віку

Clinical and serological features of systemic sclerosis in a multicenter African American cohort: Analysis of the genome research in African American scleroderma patients clinical database.

Racial differences exist in the severity of systemic sclerosis (SSc). To enhance our knowledge about SSc in African Americans, we established a comprehensive clinical database from the largest multicenter cohort of African American SSc patients assembled to date (the Genome Research in African American Scleroderma Patients (GRASP) cohort).African American SSc patients were enrolled retrospectively and prospectively over a 30-year period (1987-2016), from 18 academic centers throughout the United States. The cross-sectional prevalence of sociodemographic, clinical, and serological features was evaluated. Factors associated with clinically significant manifestations of SSc were assessed using multivariate logistic regression analyses.The study population included a total of 1009 African American SSc patients, comprised of 84% women. In total, 945 (94%) patients met the 2013 American College of Rheumatology/European League Against Rheumatism (ACR/EULAR) classification criteria for SSc, with the remaining 64 (6%) meeting the 1980 ACR or CREST (calcinosis, Raynaud's phenomenon, esophageal dysmotility, sclerodactyly, telangiectasia) criteria. While 43% were actively employed, 33% required disability support. The majority (57%) had the more severe diffuse subtype and a young age at symptom onset (39.1 ± 13.7 years), in marked contrast to that reported in cohorts of predominantly European ancestry. Also, 1 in 10 patients had a severe Medsger cardiac score of 4. Pulmonary fibrosis evident on computed tomography (CT) chest was present in 43% of patients and was significantly associated with anti-topoisomerase I positivity. 38% of patients with CT evidence of pulmonary fibrosis had a severe restrictive ventilator defect, forced vital capacity (FVC) ≤50% predicted. A significant association was noted between longer disease duration and higher odds of pulmonary hypertension, telangiectasia, and calcinosis. The prevalence of potentially fatal scleroderma renal crisis was 7%, 3.5 times higher than the 2% prevalence reported in the European League Against Rheumatism Scleroderma Trials and Research (EUSTAR) cohort.Our study emphasizes the unique and severe disease burden of SSc in African Americans compared to those of European ancestry

Survival and Predictors of Mortality in Systemic Sclerosis‐Associated Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension: Outcomes From the Pulmonary Hypertension Assessment and Recognition of Outcomes in Scleroderma Registry

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/106105/1/acr22121.pd

Immunochip analysis identifies multiple susceptibility loci for systemic sclerosis

In this study, 1,833 systemic sclerosis (SSc) cases and 3,466 controls were genotyped with the Immunochip array. Classical alleles, amino acid residues, and SNPs across the human leukocyte antigen (HLA) region were imputed and tested. These analyses resulted in a model composed of six polymorphic amino acid positions and seven SNPs that explained the observed significant associations in the region. In addition, a replication step comprising 4,017 SSc cases and 5,935 controls was carried out for several selected non-HLA variants, reaching a total of 5,850 cases and 9,401 controls of European ancestry. Following this strategy, we identified and validated three SSc risk loci, including DNASE1L3 at 3p14, the SCHIP1-IL12A locus at 3q25, and ATG5 at 6q21, as well as a suggested association of the TREH-DDX6 locus at 11q23. The associations of several previously reported SSc risk loci were validated and further refined, and the observed peak of association in PXK was related to DNASE1L3. Our study has increased the number of known genetic associations with SSc, provided further insight into the pleiotropic effects of shared autoimmune risk factors, and highlighted the power of dense mapping for detecting previously overlooked susceptibility loci

Circulating Monocyte Chemoattractant Protein-1 and Risk of Stroke: A Meta-Analysis of Population-Based Studies Involving 17,180 Individuals.

RATIONALE: Pro-inflammatory cytokines have been identified as potential targets for lowering vascular risk. Experimental evidence and Mendelian randomization suggest a role of monocyte-chemoattractant protein-1 (MCP-1) in atherosclerosis and stroke. However, data from large-scale observational studies are lacking. OBJECTIVE: To determine whether circulating levels of MCP-1 are associated with risk of incident stroke in the general population. METHODS AND RESULTS: We used previously unpublished data on 17,180 stroke-free individuals (mean age 56.7{plus minus}8.1 years; 48.8% males) from six population-based prospective cohort studies and explored associations between baseline circulating MCP-1 levels and risk of any stroke, ischemic stroke, and hemorrhagic stroke over a mean follow-up interval of 16.3 years (280,522 person-years at risk; 1,435 incident stroke events). We applied Cox proportional hazard models and pooled hazard ratios (HR) using random-effects meta-analyses. Following adjustments for age, sex, race, and vascular risk factors, higher MCP-1 levels were associated with increased risk of any stroke (HR per 1 SD increment in ln-transformed MCP-1: 1.07, 95%CI: 1.01-1.14). Focusing on stroke subtypes, we found a significant association between baseline MCP-1 levels and higher risk of ischemic stroke (HR: 1.11, [1.02-1.21]), but not hemorrhagic stroke (HR: 1.02, [0.82-1.29]). The results followed a dose-response pattern with a higher risk of ischemic stroke among individuals in the upper quartiles of MCP-1 levels as compared to the 1st quartile (HRs: 2nd quartile: 1.19 [1.00-1.42]; 3rd quartile: 1.35, [1.14-1.59]; 4th quartile: 1.38, [1.07-1.77]). There was no indication for heterogeneity across studies and in a sub-sample of four studies (12,516 individuals) the risk estimates were stable after additional adjustments for circulating levels of interleukin-6 and high-sensitivity C-reactive protein. CONCLUSIONS: Higher circulating levels of MCP-1 are associated with increased long-term risk of stroke. Our findings along with genetic and experimental evidence suggest that MCP-1-signaling might represent a therapeutic target to lower stroke risk.M. Georgakis is funded by scholarships from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and Onassis Foundation. The ARIC study has been funded in whole or in part with Federal funds from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services, under Contract nos. (HHSN268201700001I, HHSN268201700002I, HHSN268201700003I, HHSN268201700005I, HHSN268201700004I). The DHS study was funded by a grant from the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation. The EPIC-Norfolk study is funded by grants from the Medical Research Council UK (G9502233, G0401527) and Cancer Research UK (C864/A8257, C864/A2883). FHS is supported by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute’s Framingham Heart Study (Contract No. N01-HC-25195 and No. HHSN268201500001I and 75N92019D00031), received funding by grants from the National Institute of Aging (R01s AG054076, AG049607, AG059421, U01-AG049505, AG058589 and AG052409) and the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (R01 NS017950, UH2 NS100605), as well as grants for the MCP-1 measurements by NIH (1RO1 HL64753, R01 HL076784, 1 R01 AG028321). The KORA study was initiated and financed by the Helmholtz Zentrum München – German Research Center for Environmental Health, which is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and by the State of Bavaria. Furthermore, KORA research was supported within the Munich Center of Health Sciences (MC-Health), Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, as part of LMUinnovativ. The MDCS-CV study has been supported with funding from the Swedish Research Council, Swedish Heart and Lung Foundations, and the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research. This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (No 666881), SVDs@target (to M. Dichgans) and No 667375, CoSTREAM (to M. Dichgans); the DFG as part of the Munich Cluster for Systems Neurology (EXC 2145 SyNergy – ID 390857198) and the CRC 1123 (B3) (to M. Dichgans); the Corona Foundation (to M. Dichgans); the Fondation Leducq (Transatlantic Network of Excellence on the Pathogenesis of Small Vessel Disease of the Brain)(to M. Dichgans); the e:Med program (e:AtheroSysMed) (to M. Dichgans) and the FP7/2007-2103 European Union project CVgenes@target (grant agreement number Health-F2-2013-601456) (to M. Dichgans)

Current status of clinical outcome measures in inclusion body myositis: a systematised review

OBJECTIVES: Sporadic inclusion body myositis (IBM) is a debilitating idiopathic inflammatory myopathy (IIM) which affects hand function, ambulation, and swallowing. There is no approved pharmacological therapy for IBM, and there is a lack of suitable outcome measure to assess the effect of an intervention. The IBM scientific interest group under IMACS reviewed the previously used outcome measures in IBM clinical studies to lay the path for developing a core set of outcome measures in IBM. METHODS: In this systematised review, we have extracted all outcome measures reported in IBM clinical studies to determine what measures were being used and to assess the need for optimising outcome measures in IBM. RESULTS: We found 13 observational studies, 17 open-label clinical trials, and 15 randomised control trials (RCTs) in IBM. Six-minute walk distance, IBM-functional rating scale (IBM-FRS), quantitative muscle testing, manual muscle testing, maximal voluntary isometric contraction testing, and thigh muscle volume measured by MRI were used as primary outcome measures. Twelve different outcome measures of motor function were used in IBM clinical trials. IBM-FRS was the most used measure of functionality. Swallowing function was reported as a secondary outcome measure in only 3 RCTs. CONCLUSIONS: There are inconsistencies in using outcome measures in clinical studies in IBM. The core set measures developed by the IMACS group for other IIMs are not directly applicable to IBM. As a result, there is an unmet need for an IBM-specific core set of measures to facilitate the evaluation of new potential therapeutics for IBM

Association of circulating calprotectin with lipid profile in axial spondyloarthritis

Calprotectin (CPT) is released during inflammation, also in the context of atherosclerosis. The link between CPT and the atherosclerotic process was evaluated in several diseases. However, studies in axial spondyloarthritis (axSpA), associated with a high incidence of subclinical atherosclerosis, are scarce. Therefore, we assessed the association of CPT with subclinical atherosclerosis and metabolic risk factors in axSpA. CPT serum levels were measured by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay in 163 axSpA patients and 63 controls. Subclinical atherosclerosis was determined in patients by carotid ultrasonography (assessing the presence/absence of carotid plaques and carotid intima-media thickness [cIMT]). Data on inflammation, disease activity, lipid profile and treatment were collected to evaluate its relationship with CPT. axSpA patients evidenced lower CPT levels than controls. CPT showed no association with plaques or cIMT in axSpA. CPT and HDL-cholesterol negatively correlated, while a positive association of CPT with the atherogenic index was disclosed. Additionally, axSpA patients with C-reactive protein values at diagnosis higher than 3?mg/L displayed higher CPT levels. Our study shows no relationship between CPT and markers of subclinical atherosclerosis in axSpA. Nevertheless, it demonstrates an association of CPT with adverse lipid profiles and inflammatory biomarkers, which could further influence on the development of atherosclerosis.We wish to thank all the patients and controls that participated in this study and Begoña Ubilla for technical assistance. FG is a recipient of a Sara Borrell post-doctoral fellowship from the Instituto de Salud Carlos III (ISCIII) (Spain), co-funded by the European Social Fund (ESF, “Investing in your future”) (grant CD15/00095). SR-M is supported by funds of the RETICS Program (RIER) RD16/0012/0009 (ISCIII, co-funded by the European Regional Development Fund, ERDF). VM is supported by funds of a Miguel Servet type I programme (grant CP16/00033) (ISCIII, co-funded by ERDF). RL-M is a recipient of a Miguel Servet type I programme fellowship from the ISCIII, co-funded by the ESF (grant CP16/00033). This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors

A simplified multi-criteria evaluation model for landfill site ranking and selection based on AHP and GIS

This study used GIS based Multi-criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) approach for evaluating the most environmentally suitable landfill sites in the study area. The weights of relative importance of the factors guiding landfill siting were estimated using pair-wise comparisons in AHP. The maps showing suitable landfill sites were generated applying a weighted linear combination (WLC) in GIS using a comparison matrix to aggregate different significant scenarios associated with environmental and economic objectives. To determine the appropriate areas where landfill sites can be located, thematic maps for all the criteria were generated using GIS. A final map was produced showing suitability for the location of the landfill sites. The suitable sites having an area equal to or above 4 ha at one place and 90% of which is barren land were considered suitable for landfill. The selected candidate sites were ranked to get the most desirable sites for landfill