Pharmaceutical amorphous solid dispersion: A review of manufacturing strategies

Amorphous solid dispersions (ASDs) are popular for enhancing the solubility and bioavailability of poorly water-soluble drugs. Various approaches have been employed to produce ASDs and novel techniques are emerging. This review provides an updated overview of manufacturing techniques for preparing ASDs. As physical stability is a critical quality attribute for ASD, the impact of formulation, equipment, and process variables, together with the downstream processing on physical stability of ASDs have been discussed. Selection strategies are proposed to identify suitable manufacturing methods, which may aid in the development of ASDs with satisfactory physical stability.

Abnormal Brain Activity in Social Reward Learning in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: An fMRI Study

PURPOSE: We aimed to determine whether Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) would show neural abnormality of the social reward system using functional MRI (fMRI). MATERIALS AND METHODS: 27 ASDs and 12 typically developing controls (TDCs) participated in this study. The social reward task was developed, and all participants performed the task during fMRI scanning. RESULTS: ASDs and TDCs with a social reward learning effect were selected on the basis of behavior data. We found significant differences in brain activation between the ASDs and TDCs showing a social reward learning effect. Compared with the TDCs, the ASDs showed reduced activity in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, right orbitofrontal cortex, right parietal lobe, and occipital lobe; however, they showed increased activity in the right parahippocampal gyrus and superior temporal gyrus. CONCLUSION: These findings suggest that there might be neural abnormality of the social reward learning system of ASDs. Although this study has several potential limitations, it presents novel findings in the different neural mechanisms of social reward learning in children with ASD and a possible useful biomarker of high-functioning ASDs.

A Study of the Validity of and Cut-Off Scores for the Korean Version of Asperger Syndrome Diagnostic Scale

OBJECTIVES: This study examined the reliability and validity of the Korean version of Asperger Syndrome Diagnostic Scale (K-ASDS), to calculate the cut-off score in the diagnosis of Asperger syndrome. Further, we examined classification error rate when applying cut-off scores. METHODS: One hundred sixty-seven children participated in this study, including 46 with Asperger syndrome, 26 with PDD or PDD NOS, 43 with ADHD, and 52 normal children. RESULTS: An ANCOVA demonstrated no significant differences in the K-ASDS total score between the Asperger and the PDD & PDD NOS groups. However, these groups did show significantly higher scores than the ADHD and normal groups. Among the five subscales on the K-ASDS, the Asperger group obtained significantly higher scores on the language and cognition subscales than the PDD & PDD NOS groups. Two scales were found to be useful in distinguishing the Asperger group from the PDD & PDD NOS group through a discriminant analysis. According to an analysis of ROC curve, the cut-off score on the K-ASDS for the diagnosis of PDD including Asperger syndrome was 121. CONCLUSION: We discussed that K-ASDS has pretty limit.