Pharmacokinetics and bioavailability of doxycycline in fasted and nonfasted broiler chickens

The pharmacokinetics and the influence of food on the kinetic profile and bioavailability of doxycycline was studied after a single intravenous (i.v.) and oral dose of 10.0 mg/kg body weight in 7-week-old broiler chickens. Following i.v. administration the drug was rapidly distributed in the body with a distribution half-life of 0.21 ± 0.01 h. The elimination half-life of 6.78 ± 0.06 h was relatively long and resulted from both a low total body clearance of 0.139 ± 0.007 L/h·kg and a large volume of distribution of 1.36 ± 0.06 L/kg. After oral administration to fasted chickens, the absorption of doxycycline was quite fast and substantial as shown by the absorption half-life of 0.39 ± 0.03 h, the maximal plasma concentration of 4.47 ± 0.16 —g/mL and the time to reach the Cmax of 1.73 ± 0.06 h. The distribution and the final elimination of the drug were slower than after i.v. administration. The absolute bioavailability was 73.4 ± 2.5%. The presence of food in the intestinal tract reduced and extended the absorption (t1/2a = 1.23 ± 0.21 h; Cmax = 3.07 ± 0.23 µg/mL; tmax = 3.34 ± 0.21 h). The absolute bioavailability was reduced to 61.1% ± 4.4%

The influence of the moisture content of microcrystalline cellulose on the coating process in a fluidized bed

Overweight and obesity is a health threat of increasing concern and understanding the neurobiology behind obesity is instrumental to the development of effective treatment regimes. Serotonergic neurotransmission is critically involved in eating behaviour; cerebral level of serotonin (5-HT) in animal models is inversely related to food intake and body weight and some effective anti-obesity agents involve blockade of the serotonin transporter (SERT). We investigated in 60 healthy volunteers body mass index (BMI) and regional cerebral SERT binding as measured with [(11)C]DASB PET. In a linear regression model with adjustment for relevant covariates, we found that cortical and subcortical SERT binding was negatively correlated to BMI (-0.003 to -0.012 BP(ND) unit per kg/m(2)). Tobacco smoking and alcohol consumption did not affect cerebral SERT binding. Several effective anti-obesity drugs encompass blockade of the SERT; yet, our study is the first to demonstrate an abnormally decreased cerebral SERT binding in obese individuals. Whether the SERT has a direct role in the regulation of appetite and eating behaviour or whether the finding is due to a compensatory downregulation of SERT secondary to other dysfunction(s) in the serotonergic transmitter system, such as low baseline serotonin levels, remains to be established

A tale of two worlds:assessing the vulnerability of enclave shielding runtimes

status: publishe

Comprehensive deep learning-based framework for automatic organs-at-risk segmentation in head-and-neck and pelvis for MR-guided radiation therapy planning

Introduction: The excellent soft-tissue contrast of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is appealing for delineation of organs-at-risk (OARs) as it is required for radiation therapy planning (RTP). In the last decade there has been an increasing interest in using deep-learning (DL) techniques to shorten the labor-intensive manual work and increase reproducibility. This paper focuses on the automatic segmentation of 27 head-and-neck and 10 male pelvis OARs with deep-learning methods based on T2-weighted MR images.Method: The proposed method uses 2D U-Nets for localization and 3D U-Net for segmentation of the various structures. The models were trained using public and private datasets and evaluated on private datasets only.Results and discussion: Evaluation with ground-truth contours demonstrated that the proposed method can accurately segment the majority of OARs and indicated similar or superior performance to state-of-the-art models. Furthermore, the auto-contours were visually rated by clinicians using Likert score and on average, 81% of them was found clinically acceptable