ABSTRACT
Background: Toxoplasmosis is an uncommon disease in immunocompetent people. Case characteristics: We report an adolescent boy with central nervous system toxoplasmosis who presented with progressive lower cranial nerve palsies and a ring-enhancing lesion on neuroimaging. Intervention: Diagnosis of toxoplasmosis was confirmed on histopathology of the excised lesion. Message: Toxoplasmosis should be considered in the differential diagnosis of focal brain lesions irrespective of immune status.
ABSTRACT
Combination therapy has various advantages over monotherapy. In the last decade, interest in developing a combination of two or more Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (API) in a single dosage form (monolithic or bilayer tablet) has increased in the pharmaceutical industry, promoting patient convenience and compliance. Bilayer tablets can be a primary option to avoid chemical incompatibilities between API by physical separation, and to enable the development of different drug release profiles (immediate release with extended release). Several pharmaceutical companies are currently developing bi-layer tablets, for a variety of reasons: patent extension, therapeutic, marketing to name a few. To reduce capital investment, quite often existing but modified tablet presses are used to develop and produce such tablets. This article explains why the development and production of quality bi-layer tablets needs to be carried out on purpose-built tablet presses to overcome common bi-layer problems, such as layer-separation, insufficient hardness, inaccurate individual layer weight control, cross-contamination between the layers, reduced yield etc. Using a modified tablet press may therefore not be best approach in producing a quality bi-layer tablet under GMP conditions, especially when high production output is required. There are various applications of the bi-layer tablet consists of monolithic partially coated or multilayered matrices.
ABSTRACT
A coverage evaluation survey was conducted in Mandya and Koppal districts of Karnataka state following the Japanese Encephalitis (JE) vaccination campaign. The purposes of the survey were to assess coverage of children in target age group by JE vaccination and to assess adverse events following immunisation against JE, the knowledge of health care providers and community about JE & mass vaccination for JE. The study design consisted of both quantitative and qualitative methods. The quantitative data was used to know the coverage levels for children. The qualitative data collected through interviews of head of the family in the sample households, selected health care workers using a structured pretested questionnaire. The standard cluster sampling method was used for selecting the sample of children to be evaluated. In Mandya district the evaluation showed 92 % coverage in the selected sample of 313 children against the reported 83.85 %. In Koppal district the evaluation showed 70 % coverage, among the selected sample of 251 children, against the reported coverage of 69.8 %. The incidence of adverse events was 4% in Mandya sample and 6.37 % in Koppal sample. In Mandya district, about 42 % of households had knowledge of JE. About 68 % of households had prior knowledge of the immunization day. In Koppal district, the survey has revealed that only 19.85 % of the heads of household had the knowledge of JE and 48.53% had the knowledge of JE vaccination before the day of vaccination campaign.