Comparative study of paediatric prescription drug utilization between the spanish and immigrant population

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The immigrant population has increased greatly in Spain in recent years to the point where immigrants made up 12% of the infant population in 2008. There is little information available on the profile of this group with regard to prescription drug utilization in universal public health care systems such as that operating in Spain. This work studies the overall and specific differences in prescription drug utilization between the immigrant and Spanish population.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Use was made of the Aragonese Health Service databases for 2006. The studied population comprises 159,908 children aged 0-14 years, 13.6% of whom are foreign nationals. Different utilization variables were calculated for each group. Prescription-drug consumption is measured in Defined Daily Doses (DDD) and DDD/1000 persons/day/(DID).</p> <p>Results</p> <p>A total of 833,223 prescriptions were studied. Utilization is lower for immigrant children than in Spanish children for both DID (66.27 v. 113.67) and average annual expense (€21.55 v. €41.14). Immigrant children consume fewer prescription drugs than Spanish children in all of the therapy groups, with the most prescribed (in DID) being: respiratory system, anti-infectives for systemic use, nervous system, sensory organs. Significant differences were observed in relation to the type of drugs and the geographical background of immigrants.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Prescription drug utilization is much greater in Spanish children than in immigrant children, particularly with reference to bronchodilators (montelukast and terbutaline) and attention-disorder hyperactivity drugs such as methylphenidate. There are important differences regarding drug type and depending on immigrants' geographical backgrounds that suggest there are social, cultural and access factors underlying these disparities.</p

Iron Behaving Badly: Inappropriate Iron Chelation as a Major Contributor to the Aetiology of Vascular and Other Progressive Inflammatory and Degenerative Diseases

The production of peroxide and superoxide is an inevitable consequence of aerobic metabolism, and while these particular "reactive oxygen species" (ROSs) can exhibit a number of biological effects, they are not of themselves excessively reactive and thus they are not especially damaging at physiological concentrations. However, their reactions with poorly liganded iron species can lead to the catalytic production of the very reactive and dangerous hydroxyl radical, which is exceptionally damaging, and a major cause of chronic inflammation. We review the considerable and wide-ranging evidence for the involvement of this combination of (su)peroxide and poorly liganded iron in a large number of physiological and indeed pathological processes and inflammatory disorders, especially those involving the progressive degradation of cellular and organismal performance. These diseases share a great many similarities and thus might be considered to have a common cause (i.e. iron-catalysed free radical and especially hydroxyl radical generation). The studies reviewed include those focused on a series of cardiovascular, metabolic and neurological diseases, where iron can be found at the sites of plaques and lesions, as well as studies showing the significance of iron to aging and longevity. The effective chelation of iron by natural or synthetic ligands is thus of major physiological (and potentially therapeutic) importance. As systems properties, we need to recognise that physiological observables have multiple molecular causes, and studying them in isolation leads to inconsistent patterns of apparent causality when it is the simultaneous combination of multiple factors that is responsible. This explains, for instance, the decidedly mixed effects of antioxidants that have been observed, etc...Comment: 159 pages, including 9 Figs and 2184 reference