Lessons about botulinum toxin A therapy from cervical dystonia patients drawing the course of disease: a pilot study

AIM OF THE STUDY: To compare the course of severity of cervical dystonia (CD) before and after long-term botulinum toxin (BoNT) therapy to detect indicators for a good or poor clinical outcome. PATIENTS AND METHODS: A total of 74 outpatients with idiopathic CD who were continuously treated with BoNT and who had received at least three injections were consecutively recruited. Patients had to draw the course of severity of CD from the onset of symptoms until the onset of BoNT therapy (CoDB graph), and from the onset of BoNT therapy until the day of recruitment (CoDA graph) when they received their last BoNT injection. Mean duration of treatment was 9.6 years. Three main types of CoDB and four main types of CoDA graphs could be distinguished. The demographic and treatment-related data of the patients were extracted from the patients' charts. RESULTS: The best outcome was observed in those patients who had experienced a clear, rapid response in the beginning. These patients had been treated with the lowest doses and with a low number of BoNT preparation switches. The worst outcome was observed in those 17 patients who had drawn a good initial improvement, followed by a secondary worsening. These secondary nonresponders had been treated with the highest initial and actual doses and with frequent BoNT preparation switches. A total of 12 patients were primary nonresponders and did not experience any improvement at all. No relation between the CoDB and CoDA graphs could be detected. Primary and secondary nonresponses were observed for all three CoDB types. The use of initial high doses as a relevant risk factor for the later development of a secondary nonresponse was confirmed. CONCLUSIONS: Patients' drawings of their course of disease severity helps to easily detect "difficult to treat" primary and secondary nonresponders to BoNT on the one hand, but also to detect "golden responders" on the other hand

Critical Literature Review of the Kinetics for the Oxidative Dehydrogenation of Propane over Well-Defined Supported Vanadium Oxide Catalysts

Producing propene by the oxidative dehydrogenation of propane (ODH) has become an attractive and feasible route for bridging the propene production-demand gap, either as a complementary route of the existing oil-based processes or as a new alternative from propane separated from natural gas. The industrial application of propane ODH has not succeeded so far due to low propene yields. Therefore, propane ODH has been extensively investigated in recent decades using different catalysts and reaction conditions. Although several important aspects have been discussed in previous reviews (e.g., supported vanadium oxide catalysts, bulk catalysts, productivity toward propene, etc.), other relevant aspects have not been addressed (e.g., support effects, loading effects, vanadia precursor or catalyst synthesis methods, surface impurities, structure–reactivity relationships, etc.). In this review, we endeavor to cover the majority of the publications with an emphasis on the following: (1) catalyst synthesis: to focus on the influence of synthesis methods on the final vanadium oxide surface species, (2) catalyst characterization: to identify the molecular structures of the supported vanadium oxide species as well as the oxide support surface physical and chemical characteristics, (3) kinetics: to understand how reaction rates depend on variables such as concentration of gas-phase reactants and temperature, (4) structure–activity relationship: to examine the influence of the concentration as well as molecular structures of the surface vanadium oxide species on the reaction kinetics, and (5) reaction mechanism: to use the structure–activity relationships as well as kinetic studies plus theoretical calculations to corroborate and/or propose reaction pathways that account for the overall ODP reaction mechanism

A novel process concept for the three step Boscalid (R) synthesis

Nowadays, the development of chemical processes using environmentally friendly solvents is of high importance. As an alternative to conventional reaction media based on organic solvents, we show a novel aqueous surfactant-based process concept which is used for the three step synthesis of the fungicide Boscalid (R). By applying three phase microemulsion systems for the Suzuki coupling reaction, the first step within the Boscalid (R) synthesis, a simple product and catalyst separation can be achieved, whereby the water-soluble homogeneous Pd/SPhos catalyst complex can be reused several times. Together with an easily recyclable heterogeneous PtIr@TiO2 catalyst, which is applied for the hydrogenation reaction in the second step, followed by base-assisted condensation to the final product Boscalid (R) in the third step, overall yields up to 90% are achievable for the whole reaction sequence. This result was obtained without any purification step in between that requires the use of further solvents. In this way the total synthesis costs can be reduced and solvent wastage can be avoided