Clinical Pharmacy Articles

A. Ward, MSc, MRPharmS, G. O’Nally, RGN, MRPharmS, and G. Davies, PhD, MRPharmS
Hospital Pharmacist Vol 7 No 8 p210-213
September 2000

Clinical Notes Objective: To present an overview of tuberculosis (TB) in elderly nursing home (NH) residents with a focus o­n the purified protein derivative (PPD) skin test and the two-step technique used o­n admission.

Data Sources: MEDLINE search, tertiary literature sources, and a bibliographic review of other pertinent articles and reports in the English language addressing human studies.

Data Extraction: Information o­n epidemiology, pathogenesis, diagnosis, and management of TB was extracted manually from selected published articles and reports.



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ACT ’s editor emulates public radio with an “encore presentation”

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Peripheral vascular disorders can be viewed as hallmarks of atherosclerotic disease occurring in other areas of the vasculature. Unfortunately, peripheral arterial disease is most often the o­nly diagnosed disease. A diagnosis of peripheral arterial disease carries with it a reduction in life expectancy of 10 years. This increased mortality does not necessarily result from atherosclerotic peripheral vessels themselves, but rather from the concurrent pathologic changes in coronary vessels. Mortality rates of patients with both peripheral arterial disease and coronary artery disease are 20 to 30 percent after five years, 40 to 72 percent after 10 years, and 74 percent after 15 years.

Applied Clinical Trials, Jun 2, 2003

As I surfed the Web this past month I came across an article titled “Naval Center Halts Research During Inquiry About Ethics” that appeared in the New York Times o­nline several weeks ago. Apparently the National Naval Medical Center suspended all orthopedic and radiology research o­n patients in September while it investigates a violation of standard ethical practice.

FDA is revising policies to ensure that clinical studies generate sufficient data to ensure the safe use of new medical products.

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Currently, most patients with dementia are managed in the community. However, with the advent of disease-modifying therapy, hospital specialists (usually in psychiatry, especially old-age psychiatry, neurology or medicine for the elderly) are increasingly involved in diagnosis and management of the condition. Pharmacists in both secondary and primary care may contribute to the pharmaceutical care of individual patients. The introduction of drugs for use in mildto- moderate Alzheimer’s disease, for example, means that there is an increasing need for health care professionals to work with patients earlier in the disease.Many of these patients are o­n long term medication, thus requiring comprehensive advice and support.1



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Janice Matthews-Greer, Arrigo DeBenedetti, Angela Tucker, Susanna
the Journal of Applied Research
in Clinical and Experimental Therapeutics

in Clinical and Experimental Therapeutics Most pharmaceutical drug substances are lipophilic compounds, which are practically insoluble in water. Researchers have developed drug delivery systems, such as tablets, capsules, ointments, creams, gels, suspensions, solutions, and emulsions, in many dosage forms to deliver these lipophilic substances to patients. A microemulsion,1–5 o­ne of the pharmaceutical interests for new drug delivery, is normally composed of oil, water, surfactant, and cosurfactant. Hoar and Schulman6 were the first to introduce the word microemulsion, which they defined as a transparent solution obtained by titrating a normal coarse emulsion with medium-chain alcohols. The short to medium-chain alcohols are generally considered as cosurfactants in the microemulsion system.



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