Editorial Letter

Editorial Lette

Cost-Effectiveness of Clinical Pharmacy Education on Infection Management among Patients with Chronic Kidney Disease in an Indonesian Hospital

AbstractObjectivesThis study evaluated the clinical and economic impacts of clinical pharmacy education (CPE) on infection management among patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) stages 4 and 5 in Haji Adam Malik Hospital, Indonesia.MethodsA quasi-experimental economic evaluation comparing CPE impact on 6-month CKD mortality was conducted on the basis of payer perspective. The experimental group (n = 63) received care by health care providers who were given CPE on drug-related problems and dose adjustment. The control group (n = 80) was based on the historical cohort of patients who received care before the CPE. Measure of clinical outcome applied in this study was number of lives saved/100 patients treated. Cost-effectiveness ratios for CKD stages 4 and 5 patients without CPE and with CPE and incremental cost-effectiveness ratios (ICERs) for CKD stages 4 and 5 patients were analyzed.ResultsLives saved (%) in the treatment of CKD without CPE: CKD stage 4, 78.57; CKD stage 5, 57.58. Lives saved (%) in the treatment of CKD with CPE: CKD stage 4, 88.89; CKD stage 5, 65.45. Cost-effectiveness ratios for stage 4 with and without CPEs were Rp3,348,733.27 and Rp3,519,931.009, respectively. Cost-effectiveness ratios for stage 5 with and without CPEs were Rp7,137,874.93 and Rp7,871,822.27, respectively. ICERs were Rp2,045,341.22 for CKD stage 4 and Rp1,767,585.60 for CKD stage 5.ConclusionsTreatment of CKD stages 4 and 5 with CPE was more effective and cost-effective compared with treatment of CKD stages 4 and 5 without CPE. The ICERs indicated that extra costs were required to increase life saved in both stages

Wound healing properties of Eucheuma cottonii extracts in Sprague-Dawley rats.

Wounds are unavoidable events of life and arise due to agents that induce stress or injury. Wound has been a menace the world over and healing is a survival mechanism and represents an adaptation to the maintenance of normal anatomical structure and function. The objective of this study was to evaluate the potential wound healing properties of ethanolic and aqueous extracts of Eucheuma cottonii. A two centimeter diameter of skin excision wound was made on normal rats. Treatment with honey (100 mg/kg body weight) was used as positive control and untreated rats as the negative control groups. Inflammation and proliferation phases of wound healing including wound contraction, re-epithelization and granulation tissue development were monitored. This study showed that both seaweed extracts increased the rate of wound contraction compared with the positive and negative control. Ethanolic extract of E. cottonii was more effective than the aqueous extract by 20% (P<0.05). Histopathological findings showed the ethanolic extracts enhanced epithelization and tissue granulation significantly compared with both control groups. E. cottonii possesses several antioxidant compounds, which may be responsible for the accelerated wound healing. The present study demonstrated that these seaweed extracts accelerated healing better if not comparable with honey

Incremental and Scalable Computation of Dynamic Topography Information Landscapes

Dynamic topography information landscapes are capable of visualizing longitudinal changes in large document repositories. Resembling tectonic processes in the natural world, dynamic rendering reflects both long-term trends and short-term fluctuations in such repositories. To visualize the rise and decay of topics, the mapping algorithm elevates and lowers related sets of concentric contour lines. Acknowledging the growing number of documents to be processed by state-of-the-art Web intelligence applications, we present a scalable, incremental approach for generating such landscapes. The processing pipeline includes a number of sequential tasks, from crawling, filtering and pre-processing Web content to projecting, labeling and rendering the aggregated information. Processing steps central to incremental processing are found in the projection stage which consists of document clustering, cluster force-directed placement, and fast document positioning. We introduce two different positioning methods and compare them in an incremental setting using two different quality measures. The evaluation is performed on a set of approximately 5000 documents taken from the environmental blog sample of the Media Watch on Climate Change (www.ecoresearch.net/climate), a Web content aggregator about climate change and related environmental issues that serves static versions of the information landscapes presented in this paper as part of a multiple coordinated view representation

Synthesis of 2-{[5-(aralkyl/aryl)-1,3,4-oxadiazol-2- yl]sulfanyl}-N-(4-methyl-1,3-thiazol-2-yl)acetamides: Novel bi-heterocycles as potential therapeutic agents

Purpose: To evaluate the therapeutic potential of new bi-heterocycles  containing a 1,3-thiazole and 1,3,4-oxadiazole in the skeleton against Alzheimer's disease and diabetes, supported by in-silico study. Methods: The synthesis was initiated by the reaction of 4-methyl- 1,3-thiazol-2-amine (1) with bromoacetyl bromide (2) in aqueous basic medium to obtain an electrophile,2-bromo-N-(4-methyl-1,3- thiazol- 2-yl)acetamide (3). In parallel reactions, a series of carboxylic acids, 4a-r, were converted through a sequence of three steps, into respective 1,3,4-oxadiazole heterocyclic cores, 7a-r, to utilize as nucleophiles. Finally, the designed molecules, 8a-r, were synthesized by coupling 7a-r individually with 3 in an aprotic polar solvent. The structures of these bi-heterocycles were elucidated by infrared (IR), electron ionization-mass spectrometry (EI-MS), proton nuclear magnetic resonance (1H-NMR) and carbon nuclear magnetic resonance (13C-NMR). To evaluate their enzyme inhibitory potential, 8a-r were screened against acetylcholinesterase (AChE), but brine shrimp lethality bioassay.Results: The most active compound against AChE was 8l with half-maximal inhibitory concentration (IC50) of 17.25 ± 0.07 μM. Against BChE, the highest inhibitory effect was shown by 8k (56.23 ± 0.09 μM). Compound 8f (161.26 ± 0.23μM) was recognized as a fairly good inhibitor of urease. In view of its inhibition of α-glucosidase, 8o (57.35 ± 0.17μM) was considered a potential therapeutic agent.Conclusion: The results indicate that some of the synthesized products with low toxicity exhibit notable enzyme inhibitory activity against selected enzymes compared with the reference drug, and therefore, are of potential therapeutic interestKeywords: 4-Methyl-1,3-thiazol-2-amine,1,3,4-Oxadiazole,  Cholinesterases, α-Glucosidase, Urease, Brine shrim

Dynamic Topography Information Landscapes – An Incremental Approach to Visual Knowledge Discovery

Incrementally computed information landscapes are an effective means to visualize longitudinal changes in large document repositories. Resembling tectonic processes in the natural world, dynamic rendering reflects both long-term trends and short-term fluctuations in such repositories. To visualize the rise and decay of topics, the mapping algorithm elevates and lowers related sets of concentric contour lines. Addressing the growing number of documents to be processed by state-of-the-art knowledge discovery applications, we introduce an incremental, scalable approach for generating such landscapes. The processing pipeline includes a number of sequential tasks, from crawling, filtering and pre-processing Web content to projecting, labeling and rendering the aggregated information. Incremental processing steps are localized in the projection stage consisting of document clustering, cluster force-directed placement and fast document positioning. We evaluate the proposed framework by contrasting layout qualities of incremental versus non-incremental versions. Documents for the experiments stem from the blog sample of the Media Watch on Climate Change (www.ecoresearch.net/climate). Experimental results indicate that our incremental computation approach is capable of accurately generating dynamic information landscapes

An Organic Metal/Silver Nanoparticle Finish on Copper for Efficient Passivation and Solderability Preservation

For the first time, a complex formed by polyaniline (in its organic metal form) and silver has been deposited on copper in nanoparticulate form. When depositing on Cu pads of printed circuit boards it efficiently protects against oxidation and preserves its solderability. The deposited layer has a thickness of only nominally 50 nm, containing the Organic Metal (conductive polymer), polyaniline, and silver. With >90% (by volume), polyaniline (PAni) is the major component of the deposited layer, Ag is present equivalent to a 4 nm thickness. The Pani–Ag complex is deposited on Cu in form of about 100 nm small particles. Morphology, electrochemical characteristics, anti-oxidation and solderability results are reported

Influence of polymer ratio and surfactants on controlled drug release from cellulosic microsponges

Microsponge refers to a highly cross-linked particle system with a capacity to adsorb (like a dry sponge) pharmaceutical materials. There are various methods available to prepare microsponge formulations, in this study we used quasi emulsion-solvent diffusion method with a combination of hydrophobic (ethyl cellulose) and hydrophilic polymers (hydroxypropyl methylcellulose) mediated via Tween 80 and polyvinyl alcohol. Various ratios and amounts of the polymers and surfactants were used to prepare microsponge formulations using ketoprofen as a model drug and extensively characterised. Our results, for the first time, indicate successful and optimised formulation with desired pharmaceutical characteristics using a combination of hydrophobic and hydrophilic polymers