A cross-sectional study of drug prescription pattern in psoriasis patients attending dermatology and venereology department in a rural tertiary care teaching hospital

Background: Psoriasis is a chronic, inflammatory, multisystem disease which predominantly affects skin, joint, scalp and nail. Treatment strategies for psoriasis include topical therapy, systemic therapy and phototherapy (PT). Treatment usually depends on the severity, location and extent of lesion. Drug prescription studies are necessary for the recognition of areas for improvement and improving drug prescribing practices in hospitals. There are very few reports regarding drug prescription pattern in psoriasis patients. Hence we conducted this study.Methods: This was a cross-sectional study conducted on 50 newly diagnosed psoriasis patients who attended Dermatology and Venereology outpatient department of a tertiary care hospital. The prescriptions from the patients were collected for the duration of 18 months and details of prescription were collected in case record forms. The assessment of disease severity was done by psoriasis area severity index (PASI) score.Results: Majority of the patients (46%) belonged to the age group of 41-55years. The mean age of the patients was 42.48±12.29 years. Most of the patients with mild form of psoriasis were treated with topical therapy. Topical therapy included high potency steroids alone or in combination with salicylic acid and calcipotriol. Patients with more severe form of disease received combination of topical, systemic and phototherapy. Systemic therapy included oral Methotrexate and phototherapy was given as narrow band UVB (NBUVB). Further long term study is required to for proper assessment of prescription pattern in psoriasis patients.Conclusions: Most of the patients with psoriasis can be effectively treated with topical medications, and additional systemic and/or phototherapy may be required only for severe cases

A pharmacological study on the effect of calendula officinalis extract on wound healing in animals

Background: Calendula officinalis is one of those plants which have medicinal importance due to its flowers (HECO) has pharmacological activity the important pharmacological parameters have been less investigated properly and can be scientifically proved by reverse pharmacology. It was found of interest to evaluate these properties of extract of flowers of Calendula officinalis.Methods: Study was conducted in Albino Wistar rats. For evaluating wound healing activity Excision wound model and Incision wound mode were used containing 4 groups each. The wound contraction was studied by tracing the raw wound area on graph paper. Scar area and time for complete epithelisation were measured. The percentage of wound contraction was recorded. The differences between experimental groups were compared by ANOVA followed by Students “t” unpaired test.Results: In the excision wound healing model, 5% and 10% flowers showed a highly significant reduction in wound area as compared with control. In incision wound model, rats treated with 5% and 10% ointment of Calendula officinalis flowers extract showed highly significant increase in tensile strength as compared to control.Conclusions: It was found that the Calendula extract enhanced the wound healing in both the models as seen by increased synthesis of connective tissue especially collagen. There was a significant increase in the granuloma tissue. In both the models wound contraction and increased tensile strength was found to be statistically significant

Hypersensitivity reactions to intravenous ferric carboxymaltose in a patient with iron deficiency anemia: a rare case report

Ferric carboxymaltose (FCM) is a non-dextran iron preparation recently approved in the United States for intravenous treatment of iron deficiency anemia (IDA) in adult patients with intolerance or poor response to oral iron therapy. Acute hypersensitivity reactions (HSRs) during iron infusions are very rare but can be life-threatening. Adverse events, including immune system disorders (0% in FCM) and skin disorders (7.3% in FCM), are less frequently observed with FCM. On treatment with FCM, the change in hemoglobin from baseline to the highest observed level is about 2.8g/dL. Treatment of IDA with FCM resulted in fewer hypersensitivity reactions. Here, authors report a case of a 23 years old female diagnosed for IDA presented with the picture of adverse drug reaction due to injection FCM given by the physician. The patient was managed with Antibiotics, Corticosteroids and Intravenous fluids and recovered well within 12 hours of admission from this adverse drug reaction. Since such cases have been rarely reported, authors are intended to notify about this potentially dangerous drug reaction due to FCM which is used extensively in the treatment of IDA. Hence management of iron infusions requires very careful and precise observation, and, in the event of an adverse reaction, prompt recognition and severity-related interventions by well-trained medical and nursing staff

Optimasi Portofolio Resiko Menggunakan Model Markowitz MVO Dikaitkan dengan Keterbatasan Manusia dalam Memprediksi Masa Depan dalam Perspektif Al-Qur`an

Risk portfolio on modern finance has become increasingly technical, requiring the use of sophisticated mathematical tools in both research and practice. Since companies cannot insure themselves completely against risk, as human incompetence in predicting the future precisely that written in Al-Quran surah Luqman verse 34, they have to manage it to yield an optimal portfolio. The objective here is to minimize the variance among all portfolios, or alternatively, to maximize expected return among all portfolios that has at least a certain expected return. Furthermore, this study focuses on optimizing risk portfolio so called Markowitz MVO (Mean-Variance Optimization). Some theoretical frameworks for analysis are arithmetic mean, geometric mean, variance, covariance, linear programming, and quadratic programming. Moreover, finding a minimum variance portfolio produces a convex quadratic programming, that is minimizing the objective function ðð¥with constraintsð ð 𥠥 ðandð´ð¥ = ð. The outcome of this research is the solution of optimal risk portofolio in some investments that could be finished smoothly using MATLAB R2007b software together with its graphic analysis

Search for heavy resonances decaying to two Higgs bosons in final states containing four b quarks

A search is presented for narrow heavy resonances X decaying into pairs of Higgs bosons (H) in proton-proton collisions collected by the CMS experiment at the LHC at root s = 8 TeV. The data correspond to an integrated luminosity of 19.7 fb(-1). The search considers HH resonances with masses between 1 and 3 TeV, having final states of two b quark pairs. Each Higgs boson is produced with large momentum, and the hadronization products of the pair of b quarks can usually be reconstructed as single large jets. The background from multijet and t (t) over bar events is significantly reduced by applying requirements related to the flavor of the jet, its mass, and its substructure. The signal would be identified as a peak on top of the dijet invariant mass spectrum of the remaining background events. No evidence is observed for such a signal. Upper limits obtained at 95 confidence level for the product of the production cross section and branching fraction sigma(gg -> X) B(X -> HH -> b (b) over barb (b) over bar) range from 10 to 1.5 fb for the mass of X from 1.15 to 2.0 TeV, significantly extending previous searches. For a warped extra dimension theory with amass scale Lambda(R) = 1 TeV, the data exclude radion scalar masses between 1.15 and 1.55 TeV

Measurement of the top quark mass using charged particles in pp collisions at root s=8 TeV

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