ABSTRACT
To the best of our knowledge, there is no study on the use of drugs focused on the consumption of antinematode drugs in any region of the world. In the present study, we analyzed and evaluated the use of mebendazole and pyrantel in the provinces of Galicia (Spain), as well as described the variability of the consumption of both drugs between these provinces from 2016 to 2020. A descriptive, cross-sectional, and retrospective study of the consumption of these drugs, expressed in defined daily dose per 1000 inhabitants per day (DHD), was carried out. The DHD values for both drugs were small, although clearly higher, both on average and in variability, in the case of mebendazole. The difference in the mean DHD between both drugs and the geographical differences observed was statistically significant. The seasonal differences were statistically significant for both active principles, with lower values in summer. The active principle most consumed in all the provinces and years was mebendazole. The main consequence of the excessive use of this drug compared to pyrantel may be the increased risk of the development of resistance and of therapeutic failure, as well as the consequent limitation of pharmacological options in the future.
ABSTRACT
Several graph representations have been introduced for different data in theoretical biology. For instance, complex networks based on Graph theory are used to represent the structure and/or dynamics of different large biological systems such as protein-protein interaction networks. In addition, Randic, Liao, Nandy, Basak, and many others developed some special types of graph-based representations. This special type of graph includes geometrical constrains to node positioning in space and adopts final geometrical shapes that resemble lattice-like patterns. Lattice networks have been used to visually depict DNA and protein sequences but they are very flexible. However, despite the proved efficacy of new lattice-like graph/networks to represent diverse systems, most works focus on only one specific type of biological data. This work proposes a generalized type of lattice and illustrates how to use it in order to represent and compare biological data from different sources. We exemplify the following cases: protein sequence; mass spectra (MS) of protein peptide mass fingerprints (PMF); molecular dynamic trajectory (MDTs) from structural studies; mRNA microarray data; single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs); 1D or 2D-Electrophoresis study of protein polymorphisms and protein-research patent and/or copyright information. We used data available from public sources for some examples but for other, we used experimental results reported herein for the first time. This work may break new ground for the application of Graph theory in theoretical biology and other areas of biomedical sciences.
