Day: November 25, 2020

Categories : Lab Tests and ImagingTags : Leave a comment

Simple New Method to Improve Time Release of Drugs

On By ModernMedia

Researchers have developed a new method to measure the release of drugs over time, using a simple method.

OxyContin, containing the opiate oxycodone, was intended to offer 12-hour pain relief. Instead, in some patients it dissolved much more quickly, causing them to take it more frequently and ultimately become addicted. But assessing how a drug dissolves in the body is surprisingly tricky. Drug dissolution has to be measured under laboratory conditions that come as close as possible to mimicking what happens in the body.

Corresponding author William Grover, associate professor of bioengineering at the Marlan and Rosemary Bourns College of Engineering explains: “We directly measured dissolution profiles of single drug granules, which are the little spheres you see when you open up a capsule. We accomplished this using a vibrating tube sensor, which is just a piece of glass tubing bent in the shape of a tuning fork.”

Many factors influence the way a drug is dissolved in the body, such as the chemical composition and pH of the fluid, the patient’s sex and their metabolism. Meals taken also have a strong impact: taking a fatty meal increases the amount of oxycodone released from OxyContin by 25%.

Pharmaceutical companies simulate these conditions in test vessels to build a profile of how the drug works over time, but this has its drawbacks. The position of tablets in the vessels can affect dissolution rates; equipment can become clogged; the process is very time-consuming and they only provide brief snapshots over time.

The new approach takes a radically different approach, measuring the mass of a drug granule as it dissolves. This is accomplished by changes in the resonant frequency, which can be measured over time instead of being sampled.

Using the technique on three proton-pump inhibitors, the researchers found considerable variations between name-brand and generic formulations of the drugs, affecting the rate at which the drugs are absorbed by patients.

“Our technique is much cheaper and easier to perform than conventional methods, and that enables pharmaceutical companies to do more tests in a wider variety of conditions,” said Grover. “We can also easily see differences in dissolution between individual particles in a drug. That should help pharmaceutical companies improve and monitor the consistency of their manufacturing processes.”

Source: Medical Xpress

Categories : COVID Expert OpinionTags : Leave a comment

AI Solutions Are No Magic Bullet Against COVID

On By ModernMedia

A leading researcher in the field of medical image analysis has cautioned against the rush to provide AI solutions to the COVID pandemic, arguing that the need to help out must not compromise scientific principles.

Prof Hamid Tizhoosh, head of KIMIA Lab, Faculty of Engineering at the University of Waterloo wrote a piece on Medical-News.Net where he laid out the problems involved in such “quick fix” solutions.

He explains that AI researchers often make “toy” datasets which they use to experiment with in their own labs. In the middle of the pandemic, it is difficult to collaborate with radiographers who have their hands full dealing with COVID patients’ images.

AI research requires the acquisition and curation of large amounts of high-quality data, and currently there is an absence of this. While there are still few publicly available X-ray images or CT images of COVID patients’ lungs, they are beginning to crop up on the internet. AI researchers and enthusiasts are scraping together these images for their data sets and supplementing them with those of pneumonia patients, which are much more readily available. The results of their AI work are being released in papers that are not peer reviewed, yet some claim to be authoritative solutions.

Tizhoosh draws attention to the validity of this data. In one instance, he saw that the data included a pneumonia case from a paediatric patient. He cautions that, “AI is neither a ventilator nor a vaccine nor a pill; it is extremely unlikely that the exhausted radiologists in Wuhan, Qom or Bergamo download the Python code of our poorly trained network (using insufficient and improper data and described in quickly written papers and blogs) to just obtain a flawed second opinion.”

He concludes that the AI developments must come after appropriate images are made available by hospitals, that ethics approval is received and the data is properly de-identified.

Categories : COVID Medical IndustryTags : Leave a comment

Netcare CEO Recounts Challenges and Lessons of 2020

On By ModernMedia

In an interview posted on Moneyweb, the CEO of Netcare, Dr Richard Friedland, related how the company had weathered a very hard financial year.

“We have certainly felt the effects financially and we haven’t been able to pay a dividend to shareholders. But, as I’ve said to all of our frontline workers, we paid a dividend to South Africa in terms of looking after so many thousands – more than 28 000 Covid patients. That is far more significant than anything we could have done in monetary terms,” said Friedland.

The company learned valuable lessons, being at “the tip of the spear” of the COVID pandemic. Following their first cases on March 9, a large outbreak occurred at St Augustine’s, followed by a much smaller one at Kingsway. 

Friedland spoke of the sacrifices the staff had made over the past months, saying “This is not a time to abandon them. It’s a time to stand with them. It does mean our recovery will be longer, but we’ll do that together. And I think it’s critically important, given the headwinds we’re facing in South Africa.”

The company made much of its profit from asset disposal, but Friedland said that they were seeing a return to demands for elective surgery, excepting their two hospitals in the Nelson Mandela Bay area. He noted that there was a noticeable uptick in cases, similar to what they had experienced in the first wave, and that their hospitals were relatively full. However, they were putting their lessons learned into practice by having readied adequate stores of PPE and oxygen, for example. The length of stay has been reduced from 22 days to seven. He remarked on how stressful the pandemic had been for all concerned, but he said that continued efforts must be made.

“[…]Covid nearly robbed us of our humanity, and we need to be very careful about that going forward, particularly as healthcare workers, when patients cannot see their loved ones, when they’ve got to communicate with us through masks and spaces. We’ve managed to find other ways, through Facetime and mobiles, to communicate with their loved ones; but there’s no excuse for [not] improving communication all the time. I think Covid exposed that and there’s been a lot of anxiety as a result that we still need to manage,” concluded Friedland.

Categories : HospitalsTags : Leave a comment

Cash for Medical Intern Posts to be Investigated

On By ModernMedia

The South African Medical Association (Sama) has said that it will investigate claims that changes of intern position at hospitals are being sold for cash.

On Monday, Sama chair Dr Angelique Coetzee said that this violated doctors’ ethical responsibility to provide treatment to patients regardless of whether that location suited the doctor or not.

Students were reportedly prepared to pay up to R100 000 for posts at their hospital of choice.

“We simply cannot have a situation where intern positions are being ‘sold’ for whatever reason. The placement of interns is a difficult process, and many doctors are unfortunately not placed where they want to be. For those fortunate enough to have found placements, to now sell them to the highest bidders is not fair on others waiting for legitimate placements,” Coetzee said.

The trading of posts reportedly takes place over social media platforms and messaging services, including Facebook and Telegram.

“Given the complexities and historical issues with the placement of intern doctors, the current haggling over preferred placements is out of touch with the realities of the situation. And, ultimately, this sends the message that with enough money, certain people are able to buy themselves the placements of their choice, a situation we cannot accept or tolerate,”  Coetzee said.

Source: Sowetan Live

Categories : UncategorizedTags : Leave a comment

Cutting Edge Bio-printing Fabricates Tiny Kidneys

On By ModernMedia

Researchers from the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute (MCRI) and biotech company Organovo have successfully bio-printed miniature human kidneys with unparalleled speed and quality to be used for toxicity screening of medications known to cause kidney damage. 

A world leader in modeling the kidney, Professor Melissa Little of the MRCI said, “Drug-induced injury to the kidney is a major side effect and difficult to predict using animal studies. Bioprinting human kidneys are a practical approach to testing for toxicity before use.”

The new study involved testing the toxicity of aminoglycosides, a class of antibiotics that commonly damage the kidney. The study revealed deaths of certain types of kidney cells when exposed to aminoglycosides.

Organovo first began bio-printing kidneys in 2015, but their new processes are much faster, allowing 200 mini-kidneys to be produced in 10 minutes. The improvement in speed and quality has opened the doorway for bioprinting entire organs for transplant. “3-D bioprinting can generate larger amounts of kidney tissue but with precise manipulation of biophysical properties, including cell number and conformation, improving the outcome.”

Professor Little said that prior to this study, the possibility of using such technology for transplantation was too complicated to consider. “The pathway to renal replacement therapy using stem cell-derived kidney tissue will need a massive increase in the number of nephron structures present in the tissue to be transplanted,” she said.

“By using extrusion bioprinting, we improved the final nephron count, which will ultimately determine whether we can transplant these tissues into people.”

Source: Medical Xpress