ABSTRACT
Background: Establishment of Pradhan Mantri Bhartiya Janaushadhi Kendras through Pradhan Mantri Janaushadhi Pariyojana (PMBJP) is a breakthrough step to reduce expenses in healthcare due to costly branded names in prescription. Medical council of India also amended clause 1.5 of the Indian Medical Council Regulations, 2002 mandating the doctors to prescribe medicines by generic names in place of brand names. Moreover, medical practitioner nowadays has raised concern about education/qualification of the chemist who is being made the decision maker.Methods: In this questionnaire based cross-sectional observational study, all students admitted to post graduation course in academic year 2018 were included and those who were not willing to give consent were excluded from study. A knowledge, attitude and practices (KAP) questionnaire containing 12 questions was assessed by using true/false type and Likert scale-based questions. Descriptive statistics used to generate frequencies, percentages and proportions.Results: Majority of the population have answered positively about knowledge questions. Surprisingly 72.41% population don’t know about process of new drug approval. Most of them agreed to pros and cons of generic drug prescribing. 58.14% population always write generic names in their prescription. Shockingly 74.42% population write prescription based on their knowledge from promotional literature by a medical representative.Conclusions: Findings of present study highlights usefulness of the practice of writing generic names in prescriptions. It also raises concern about professional qualification of the chemist who will be decision maker in drug delivery to consumers.
ABSTRACT
Background: Epilepsy is a chronic disorder characterised by recurrent seizures/convulsions that affects people of all ages. Phenytoin sodium is an effective, cheaper, most commonly used first line drug for the treatment of epilepsy. As a result of sure encounter with various painful inflammatory conditions like chronic arthritis at some point of time the co administration of analgesics becomes inevitable in epileptic patients. Aceclofenac is a commonly prescribed, moderately COX-2 selective congener of Diclofenac. Because of similarity in some pharmacokinetic properties between Phenytoin sodium and Aceclofenac; the possibility of drug interaction between them is postulated.Methods: In this prospective randomized observational study diagnosed and stabilized patients of epilepsy of either sex of more than 18 years of age were included. Patient taking Phenytoin sodium 100mg BD and prescribed tab Aceclofenac 100mg bd for 7 days. Serum Phenytoin sodium levels were measured before and after administering Aceclofenac. Graph pad Prism software Version 6 used for statistical analysis.Results: At the end of the study, we found statistically significant effect (p = 0.0104) on serum Phenytoin sodium level. However, no statistical difference was found in any of the other parameters i.e., epilepsy outcome parameters and lab parameters - Urine routine microscopy, CBC, LFT, KFT and RBG.Conclusions: Findings in this study forms a platform for future researchers to explore this field of research by designing an interventional study with well scrutinised study population considering all pharmacokinetic parameters.