Structured pharmacist-led intervention programme to improve medication adherence in COPD patients: A randomized controlled study

Background

COPD is characterised by a progressive airflow limitation in the lungs. However, adherence to therapy improves management of symptoms and delays disease progression. Therefore, patients' knowledge and awareness about the disease are important. Hence, pharmacist-led educational interventions could achieve this and improve medication adherence.

New fixed dose chemical combinations: the way forward for better diabetes type II management?

Introduction: Diabetes type II is a complex disease with unclear pathophysiology. Lack of adherence and high cost of medicines invariably make the management of diabetes type II highly challenging. Newer fixed drug combinations (FDC) are cost effective and can improve the medication adherence thereby prevent the complications of diabetes. Safety and efficacy of newer FDCs are not well established in all populations. Moreover, extrapolating the efficacy and safety data globally may not be pragmatic. Our review will discuss newer chemical combinations available for the treatment of diabetes type II.

Areas covered: In the present review, the authors discussed the newer FDCs available as add on therapy to the existing pharmacological interventions of diabetes type II that have shown promising results in various randomised trials with regard to efficacy and safety.

Expert opinion: Safety and efficacy data of newer FDCs available as an adjuvant therapy to conventional pharmacological interventions in diabetes type II revealed that fewer new FDCs are promising with their high efficacy and low adverse effect. However, there is a need to explore the place in therapy to establish the utility of FDC in diabetes type II management.     

The comparative characteristics of snake and kiwi fruits

In the time of globalization many of the tropical fruits can be find at the markets of Europe and North America. Most customers are not familiar with the nutritional and proliferative values of these fruits. Therefore, a less known snake fruit was compared with better known kiwi fruit, using fluorometry, FT-IR spectroscopy, several radical scavenging and proliferative assays and statistical evaluation.     

Comparison of the contents of bioactive compounds and the level of antioxidant activity in different kiwifruit cultivars

The aim of this investigation was to find the best among four different cultivars of kiwifruit (‘Hayward’, ‘Daeheung’, ‘Haenam’ and ‘Bidan’) for human consumption. The bioactive compounds and the level of antioxidant activity of these cultivars were determined and compared. The presence of polyphenols (flavonoids and phenolic acids) in the investigated samples was studied by Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy. By far the highest levels (P < 0.05) of polyphenols and ascorbic acids were found in ‘Bidan’ (25.9 ± 1.3 mg GAE/g and 152 ± 10.4 mg/g DW, respectively), which also contained the highest levels of protocatechuic and vanillic acids. In addition, the level of antioxidant activity (μM TE/g DW) was significantly higher (P < 0.05) in ‘Bidan’ (121 ± 5.8, 109 ± 11.2, 102 ± 6.6 and 94 ± 4.7 for CUPRAC, ABTS, DPPH and FRAP radical scavenging assays, respectively). Pattern-recognition techniques (cluster analysis, principal component analysis, factor analysis, and canonical discriminant analysis) were used to compare the cultivars. A high correlation was found among the polyphenols (R² = 0.99), ascorbic acid (R² = 0.99+) and the antioxidant activity in the studied cultivars. In conclusion, the overall bioactivity of the cultivars was: ‘Bidan’ > ‘Haenam’ > ‘Daeheung’ = ‘Hayward’. ‘Bidan’, a relatively new cultivar, can be recommended for consumption.