ABSTRACT
The present study was performed to find out the prescribing patterns of the doctors for geriatric patients, to characterize the behavior of the outdoor geriatric patients of a selected private hospital and to investigate whether polypharmacy is a suitable indicator for occurrence of unnecessary or irrational drug therapy. A prospective study was carried out with the help of a structured questionnaire and the prescriptions of the patients. Patients aged 65 year and above were included in the study. A total of 35 patients were interviewed and their prescriptions were collected after taking their consent. Among the patients, hypertension was found to be most prevalent (46%) followed by diabetes mellitus (16%). Chief complaints were chest pain (41%), joint pain (37%), muscle pain (34%) and respiratory distress (27%). About 34% of the patients did not comply with the prescription and 75% did not take regular physical exercise. Stress (49%) and insomnia (41%) were common among the patients. Polypharmacy was observed in 69% of the patients and an average of 5.5 drugs was given to them. Losartan potassium was the mostly prescribed (31%) drugs followed by esomeprazole (20%) and multivitamins (17%). Unnecessary drug use problem can be prevented by the rational prescribing of drugs by the practitioners. Any medications without therapeutic benefit, goal or indication should be avoided during prescribing for geriatric patients. This study reveals the prescription trends, and indicates possible areas of improvement in prescribing practice.
ABSTRACT
Quality of pharmaceutical product is very important because drugs must be marketed as safe and therapeutically active formulations whose performance is consistent and predictable. The evaluation of the physical characteristics of the pharmaceutical products can ensure their quality as well as bioavailability and impart optimum therapeutic activity. Ketorolac tromethamine was chosen for this comparative study because this drug is widely used worldwide for treating moderate to severe pain. The present study compared the weight variation, hardness and the abrasion withstanding ability of eight brands of Ketorolac tromethamine tablets marketed in Bangladesh following USP guidelines. All eight brands of Ketorolac tromethamine tested conformed to the USP weight variation test. All the brands had average hardness of ≥3 kg which was satisfactory for immediate release tablet like ketorolac tromethamine. All the brands had shown their friability variation within ±1% range specified by USP. Standard deviation was calculated among all the brands which was very close to individual percentage friability of all the brands. All the brands of ketorolac tromethamine complied with USP requirements of physical quality parameters. It follows that these brands will show good disintegration and dissolution profile which would further help in achieving optimum bioavailability and in fulfilling the patient demands.
ABSTRACT
The aim of the present study was to evaluate and compare the antioxidant, antimicrobial and cytotoxic effects of the methanolic extracts of Glycosmis pentaphylla stems and leaves. Efforts have been given to identify the activities by using highest grade solvent for preparing the extracts. A survey of the antioxidant effect was performed using DPPH method. The methanolic extract of Glycosmis pentaphylla stems showed moderate antioxidant property (103.35 μg/ml) where the leaves showed very little (337.62 μg/ml). This antioxidant activity may be due to some polyphenolic compounds identified from this plant. Both the extracts showed moderate antimicrobial activity with the highest zone of inhibition for E. coli (23.67±0.76 mm) and Salmonella paratyphi (15.33±0.76 mm) among the tested micro-organisms. This inhibition may legit the traditional implication of the stems of G. pentaphylla as toothbrush. The cytotoxic activity of stems extract of G. pentaphylla was found to be highly potent (5.53 μg/ml, 95% CI, 7.27-4.21) where as the leaves also showed significant activity (47.34 μg/ml, 95% CI, 50.77- 44.15). Several antitumor alkaloids were identified from this plant in the laboratory. The study results also indicate that Glycosmis pentaphylla is a good source of medicinally important compounds.