Proper patient education improves hepatitis C patients’ disease-related knowledge and antiviral treatment acceptance in rural China / 中华肝脏病杂志

Objective@#To evaluate the affect of hepatitis C virus (HCV) education in chronic hepatitis C patients’ disease related knowledge and antiviral treatment acceptance in rural china.@*Methods@#Rural HCV patients of attended CHC project of HCV education. Doctor delivered subsequent interactive lecture, and patients completed pre- and post-education questionnaires before and after taking the lectures.@*Results@#151 CHC patients were included. Mean age was 57.3 years old, 50.3% were male, 51.0% of the students had primary school education or illiterate, and 76.2% had a monthly income below RMB 3,000. 98.0% of patients defined their baseline HCV knowledge as "nothing" or "a little bit". A multivariate analysis reveled baseline knowledge scores were associated with age and household income. After education, mean knowledge score (range: 0-28) increased from 13.1 to 23.0 (P < 0.001) and average percent of patients with correct answers from the topic rose from 46.8% to 82.1% (P < 0.001), and patients’ antiviral treatment acceptance increased from 33.9% to 65.6% (P < 0.001).@*Conclusion@#A rural Chinese patients had less education, HCV education delivered on the preferred format of patients substantially improved hepatitis C patients’ disease-related knowledge and antiviral treatment acceptance in rural china.

Evaluation of the quality and stability of amoxicillin oral suspension.

The laboratory control of diseases frequently receives powders for oral suspension of amoxicillin, with reports of therapeutic ineffectiveness and problems in reconstituting suspensions. The compendial analyzes not shows quality deviations. This fact motivated the study to assess the quality and stability of oral suspensions amoxicillin in the period of use corresponding to the first and seventh days after reconstitution. Six generic drugs were tested along with the referential drug during its intake period, from the first to the seventh day after powder reconstitution for suspension by high performance liquid chromatographic method. The reconstitution of all samples resulted in suspensions with homogeneous aspect. Both pH assay and amoxicillin identification complied with the product’s specification. The amoxicillin rates were determined in the 1th and 7th days after the reconstitution of samples through a method for stability detection, developed and validated before. At the 1th day, a generic drug sample presented 78% of the rate declared, below the lowest-value specification (90%). In the 7th day, 3 generic drug samples presented rates below 87%, 83% and 68.1% of the declared value, lower than the minimal specification, thus evidencing pharmacotechnical flaws in the product because of its lack of stability. Percent degradation rates of 3.5%, 4.0%, 6.0%, 9.9%, and 15% amoxicillin in 5 of the generic formulations studied are significant. The present study about amoxicillin oral suspension provides information about the stability during the using period, described for manufacturers. Even though the degradation products have not been identified, they can compromise their safe use, meaning potential risks to the users because of possible toxicity and/or therapeutic inefficacy.