Water demand profile before and during COVID-19 pandemic in a Brazilian social housing complex.

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way resources are consumed around the world. The relationship between the pandemic and water consumption has important implications for the management of water use and must be evaluated in depth. The main goal of this research paper is to establish a comparison between pre-pandemic and pandemic water consumption profiles for 14 social-housing buildings located in Joinville, Southern Brazil. Telemetry data from each apartment were collected on an hourly basis before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. The analysis was based on descriptive statistics on the hourly and daily water consumption in addition to its profile plots. The best probability distribution fitting was also determined. To assess the differences in water consumption due to de pandemic, the Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney test was employed and a Generalized Linear Model with mixed effects was fitted to the data. The Lognormal distribution was shown to be the most appropriate to model the water consumption data. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the two daily peak consumption periods changed from 12 h to 15 h and from 19 h to 21 h. The COVID-19 pandemic also impacted daily water consumption, leading to a small, yet significant, increase in demand in the first quarter of the pandemic period.

FCE 28260, a new 5 alpha-reductase inhibitor: in vitro and in vivo effects.

FCE 28260 is a novel inhibitor of 5 alpha-reductase (5 alpha R), the enzyme responsible for the conversion of testosterone (T) to 5 alpha-dihydrotestosterone (DHT). The compound caused inhibition of rat and human prostatic enzymes, with IC50 values of 15 and 16 nM, respectively, compared to the values of 30 and 52 nM shown by finasteride. Furthermore, FCE 28260 was highly potent in inhibiting human recombinant 5 alpha R type 2 and 1 isozymes, showing IC50 values of 3.3 and 36 nM, and therefore it was more potent than finasteride (IC50 values of 8.5 and 470 nM) on both isozymes. In prepubertal, T-implanted castrated rats, FCE 28260, given orally for 7 days, reduced ventral prostate growth with an ED50 of 0.8 mg/kg, i.e. five times lower than that shown by finasteride. No anti-androgenic activity in DHT-implanted castrated rats was found up to 10 mg/kg/day. In adult male rats, FCE 28260 reduced prostatic DHT concentrations 6 h after oral dosing with a potency similar to that of finasteride (65% reduction at 1 mg/kg) but was found to be markedly more potent than the reference compound at 24 h (74% reduction in prostate DHT at 10 mg/kg, compared to 26% reduction induced by finasteride). These results indicate that FCE 28260 represents a marked improvement over finasteride.

Effects of 5 alpha-reductase inhibitors on intraprostatic androgens in the rat.

FCE 27837 is a novel inhibitor of 5 alpha-reductase, the enzyme responsible for the conversion of testosterone (T) to 5 alpha-dihydrotestosterone (DHT). The compound caused inhibition of human and rat prostatic enzymes, with IC50 values of 51 and 60 nM, respectively. The in vivo effect of FCE 27837 on 5 alpha-reductase was evaluated in adult male rats, treated orally at 10 mg/kg/day for 10 days. The compound caused 33 and 42% reductions in ventral prostate and seminal vesicle weights, respectively. The prostatic content of DHT, measured 6 h after the 10th dose of FCE 27837, was reduced by 75%, whereas T content increased by 442%. Similar effects were observed with 10 mg/kg/day of finasteride, whereas epristeride, tested at the same oral dose, was found to be the least effective compound, decreasing prostate weight by 22% and DHT content by 46%. Castration caused > 90% reductions in prostatic weight and prostatic DHT.