Eventos adversos en la terapia farmacológica de la enfermedad inflamatoria intestinal / Adverse events associated with the treatment of inflammatory bowel disease

Background: The purpose of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) treatment is to achieve resolution of symptoms and remission of disease with a minimum of adverse events (AE). Aim: To report AE of different prescriptions used for the treatment of IBD. Material and Methods: Analysis of a registry of patients with IBD held at a private clinic from 1976 to 2013. All used medications, the occurrence and severity of AE were recorded. Results: The records of 346 patients aged 16 to 86 years, 74% with ulcerative colitis, were analyzed. The most commonly type of medications prescribed were 5-aminosalicylates (5-ASAs) in 329 patients (92%), followed by adrenal steroids in 218 (61%). Forty nine AE were recorded in the same number of patents (14%). These were more common in patients with Crohn disease (n = 19, 21%). An univariate analysis, demonstrated that extra-intestinal manifestations, hospitalizations secondary to IBD crisis, requirement of surgery and treatment with steroids, immunosuppressants or biologic agents were significantly associated with the presence of AE. AEs were more common with immunosuppressants, followed by 5-ASAs and steroids. Discontinuation of therapy was required in 79, 100 and 43% of patients taking these medications, respectively. Twenty percent of AEs were severe. Leukopenia and pancytopenia along with alopecia were the most common AEs attributable to azathioprine. Conclusions: The occurrence of AEs in patients with IBD is uncommon. Even inmunosuppressants or biologic agents have a low rate of AE and most of them mild.

Laboratory and pilot testing of electrocoagulation for removing scale-forming species from industrial process waters

This study investigated the performance of electrocoagulation using iron and aluminum electrodes for removing silica, calcium and magnesium from cooling tower blowdown and reverse osmosis reject waters. Experiments were conducted at both the bench and pilot scales to determine the levels of target species removal as a function of the coagulant dose. At the bench scale, aluminum removed the target compounds from both cooling tower blowdown and reverse osmosis reject more efficiently than iron. A 2 mM aluminum dose removed 80% of the silica and 20 to 40% of the calcium and magnesium. The same iron dose removed only 60% of the silica and 10 to 20% of the calcium and magnesium. When operated with iron electrodes, pilot unit performance was comparable to that of the bench unit, which suggests that such systems can be scaled-up on the basis of coagulant dose. However, when operated with aluminum electrodes the pilot unit underperformed the bench unit due to fouling of the electrode surfaces after a few hours of operation. This result was completely unexpected based on the short-term experiments performed using the bench unit

[ physical, chemical and microbial quality of treated water in Qom's desalination plants]

Water is the basis of life and health. The health of food and water supply plays an important role in human health. One of the methods of water desalination is membrane filter reverse osmosis method. This method is used for desalination of drinking water supply in Qom. This is a descriptive, cross-sectional study designed to determine the quality of treated water in Qom desalination plant in year 2002. Inlet and outlet water samples of this plant were examined by the standard examination methods and the collected data were compared with national and international standards. Excel software was used for statistical analysis. The results showed that the residual chlorine concentration, total hardness and fluoride concentration were lower than the minimum standard limit set for drinking water. The pH was also lower than the minimum standard limit. Microbial contamination was detected in 6% of samples. The results show that the acidity of water was lower than standard in whole plant. This gives corrosive properties to the water and increases the dissolution of materials, which are in contact with this water. In order to eliminate the secondary contamination, the concentration of residual chlorine should be 1 mg/l. But, none of the measurements showed a concentration as high as this value. As fluoride is an important element for health and growth of bone and teeth, especially in growing children, fluoride should be added to the drinking water. As the relationship between hardness of water and cardiovascular diseases has been established, it can be concluded that this drinking water supply can increase the risk of cardiovascular diseases in long time. Dilution of this water is recommended to adjust various factors to the standard limits and keep the total dissolved solids low

Softeners for hardness removal.

The depletion of water resources, both surface and subsurface and deterioration of water quality made researchers and policy makers to think of the possible remedies to make water sources potable / wholesome. There is a need to address the problems of hardness and fluoride in subsurface water on priority basis. In this direction, bench scale studies were conducted to evaluate the performance of water softeners. Indepth studies were carried out at University B.D.T College of Engineering, Davangere, Karnataka, to assess the performance of bench scale softeners of D to H ratio 1:2, 1:3, 1:4 in removing hardness of varied concentrations from both synthetic and natural water samples. Studies revealed that irrespective of D to H ratio of softeners, the waters having hardness concentration up to 1000 mg/l can be treated to the same degree (81.68% and above). The findings of regeneration studies and cost economics are also summarized in this paper.

Feasibility study of crystallization process for water softening in a pellet reactor

One of the undesirable characteristics of some groundwater sources is hardness, which has some adverse effects on water pipes, boilers and soap consumption. Therefore several treatment processes have been introduced to remove or reduce the hardness from hard waters. One of the new innovations in this regard is crystallization process. Hardness can be removed from hard waters by growth of calcium carbonate crystals in a fluidized bed reactor called pellet reactor. The design, setting up, starts up and reaching optimal condition for calcium carbonate crystallization process in a pellet reactor which has been initially seeded with sand as a crystal citation can be a successful solution for treatment of hard waters. The chemistry of pellet softening process is essentially the same as conventional softening process, instead of precipitation of calcium carbonate which does not have any useful consumption and must be removed once in a while some how, crystallization process in a fluidized bed reactor produces pure solid grain of calcite. These pellets can be used in some industries and are in fact an economic commodity. For this purpose a pilot was set up as a crystallization reactor and water with total hardness ranging from 150 up to 500 mg/l as CaCO 3 was fed to the system with a flow rate of 24 l/hr. To remove hardness, caustic and soda, lime milk was fed to the system separately at first stage at then together. The formation of CaCO 3 crystals on the surface of sands represented the reduction of hardness. An analysis is made for the characteristics of a softed water resulted from the use of caustic soda, lime milk or both as regent

Changes of Endotoxin Concentration in Dialysis Solution During Hemodialysis / 대한신장학회잡지

Endotoxin is a component of bacterial outer membrane. Endotoxin is generally a heat-stable toxin that has the various biological activities such as pyrogenicity, macrophage and complement activation. To determine the source of endotoxin contamination in our water processing and dialysate-delivery system in Korea, endoxin was monitored in tap water at the inlet of water softening, in processed water, at the inlet of dialysate proportioner and in the dialysate at the inlet and outlet of the dialyzer. The endotoxin levels were 24.9ng/ml at the inlet of water softening and 2.3ng/ml in processed water. The removal rate of endotoxin during water processing is 90.7%. Endotoxin concentration were 3.58ng/ ml at the inlet of dialyzer and 12.4ng/ml at the outlet of dialyzer. There was no statistically significant change between the inlet of dialyzer and the outlet of dialyzer. These result suggested that a reverse-osmosis system appeared necessary for decreasing endotoxin in tap water to a certain concentration, so the level of endotoxin in the dialysate would be minimal.

Qualidade da agua: sua importancia em farmacias homeopaticas / Quality of water: its importance in homeopathic pharmacy

A discussäo da importância da qualidade da água utilizada em farmácias para o preparo de medicamentos homeopáticos e dos métodos de purificaçäo para obtençäo dessa água säo os princípios que nortearam esse trabalho. Na conduçäo do estudo, os objetivos que fixamos foram os seguintes: detectar a presença de contaminantes na água, avaliar os processos de purificaçäo e propor soluçöes para o controle da água. Para tanto foram analisadas amostras de água quanto à condutividade específica, além de testes por cromatografia gasosa e espectrofotometria de absorçäo atômica. Os resultados indicam que a água destilda pode ter uma qualidade de pureza bastante satisfatória, especialmente quando alguns cuidados relativos à água de abastecimento e à manutençäo do destilador forem observados. Testes de condutividade podem prover uma excelente indicaçäo da qualidade da água destilada que está sendo utilizada.

Atividade bactericida de purificadores de água de uso doméstico / Bactericide activity of water purifier of domestic use

O presente trabalho tem por objetivo avaliar a efetividade de purificadores de água na eliminaçao de bactérias coliformes e bactérias mesófilas aeróbicas. Foram testados quatro sistemas de filtraçao de água: 1 OZONIZADOR + VELA DE CELULOSE, 2 OZONIZADOR + VELA DE PORCELANA POROSA, 3 OZONIZADOR e 4 VELA DE PORCELANA POROSA. Os resultados demonstraram que nenhum sistema de filtraçao entre os estudados foi eficiente na eliminaçao total das bactérias comuns na água, porém para atender a nossa legislaçao, que estabelece padroes para coliformes, dois sistemas podem ser recomendados: OZONIZADOR + VELA DE PORCELANA POROSA e VELA DE PORCELANA POROSA. Estes sistemas eliminam ou reduzem a contaminaçao por bactérias coliformes