Name Of Medicine Research Articles

Free-Riding for the Common Good? Generics, Biosimilars and References to Originator Trademarks in Comparative Advertising in France

Abstract Generic and biosimilar medicines are fiscally advantageous products in relation to which the generally applicable EU rules governing comparative advertising seemingly conflict with national healthcare policy. This article argues that the permissive stance of the French courts on the use of the trademarked names of originator medicines in advertising for generics appears inconsistent with the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union as it stands in relation to Art. 4(f) of Directive 2006/114/EC on misleading and comparative advertising. This gives rise to an undesirable divergence in the application of the Directive between Member States, suggesting that further guidance is needed on the application of the provision to generic-originator comparisons. It is submitted that treating generic drugs with particular leniency is unjustified given the detrimental effect the use of originator trademarks by the marketers of generics and biosimilars may have on the ability of the originator trademark to stimulate investment into manufacturing quality. The issue of the degree to which the use of originator trademarks in advertising promoting generics and biosimilars should be permitted serves as a poignant example of the delicate balance required for comparative advertising to increase consumer choice whilst simultaneously protecting competitors from advertising that may ultimately be detrimental to undistorted competition in the Single Market.

Monitoring of the assortment structure and price dynamics of hepatoprotectors in the modern Ukrainian pharmaceutical market

High incidence of liver disease is one of the major problems for health care in the world. Today, etiotropics such as vaccines, antivirals, etc. are used to prevent and treat liver diseases. In addition, medicines for additional treatment of liver diseases, so-called hepatoprotectors, are often used in medical practice. Hepatoprotectors vary in both chemical composition and mechanism of action and target to increase liver resistance to adverse factors.The aim of the study was to provide a comprehensive analysis of Ukrainian pharmaceutical market in the framework of the group of hepatoprotectors and its price range.Materials and methods. The study was carried out grounding on the data provided by State Register of Medicines of Ukraine, International Classification of Diseases 11 issue (МКХ-11, ICD-11), entered into force on June 18, 2018 by the Order of Health Ministry of Ukraine № 892 dated 18.04.2019. “About Approval of the Eleventh Issue of the National Formulary of Medicines and Making It Available”, National List of Essential Medicines, approved by the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine № 333 dated 25.03.2009 (on 07.05.2019), and analytical system of the pharmaceutical market “Farmstandard” by Morion company for the period between 2019 and the first half of 2020. During investigation, systemic, structural, logical practices and method of summarization were used.Results. The results of the research show that the domestic market for hepatoprotectors is saturated enough. It embraces both Ukrainian producers and foreign firms, mainly from India, Germany, France, Italy, China, Switzerland. The analysis of the changes in the prices for drugs of this group shows that during the period between 2017–2020 there was a significant increase in the prices of all drugs in the submitted sub-groups, which can be attributed to currency market instability. The structural analysis of the hepatoprotectors shows that the subgroup A05A X10, namely the combined drugs, constitutes the majority (57, 51, 67, 55 names according to studied year). The smallest subgroup is A05B A06 Ornithine oxyglurate (no names of medicine were registered by domestic producers in 2017).The activity of domestic producers should be noted. The proportion of Ukrainian preparations in this segment is 86.20 %, 84.12 %, 68.00 %, 56.79 % (first half of 2020) (according to years under consideration).Conclusions. The range analysis conducted for the period between 2017–2020 (first half-year) shows saturation of the domestic pharmaceutical market with hepatotropic drugs. Structural analysis conducted reveals that the pharmaceutical market in Ukraine is dominated by Ukrainian medicines, in particular from 56.79 % to 86.20 % (according to years under consideration). Price trend analysis shows low availability of imported products for some sub-groups: during 2019–2020, in sub-group A05A A02 Ursodeoxycholic acid price ranged from 1207.57 to 2376.15 UAH, and A05B A06 Ornithine oxyglurate it ranged from 1397.99 to 2557.55 UAH respectively.

Comparative analysis of medications for antibiotic therapy of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in the pharmaceutical market of Ukraine and France

The aim of the work – comparative analysis of the assortment of registered medicines for antibiotic therapy of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) in the domestic market and similar segment of the French market. Materials and methods. The study of drug assortment in Ukraine was carried out according to the State Register of Medicines of Ukraine , employing the directory of medicines Compendium online , Anatomical Therapeutic Chemical Classification , web-resource Tabletki.UA . Database Base de donnees publique des medicaments was consulted while studying the pharmaceutical market in France. The following methods were used: information search, marketing analysis, graphical, comparative and logical methods. Results . A comparative analysis of medicines employed in Ukraine and France for antibiotic therapy of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) was performed. Conclusions . Pharmaceutical markets of drugs for antibiotic therapy of COPD in Ukraine and France are analyzed. As of January 2020, there are 43 brand names (BN) of medicines with 73 available range items registered in Ukraine, and 87 BN medicines with 150 available range items registered in France. The analysis of drugs assortment showed that foreign drugs predominate in Ukraine and France, their share is 84 % and 55 %, respectively. Among the drug-importing countries, the leaders in Ukraine are India and Germany, and in France they are Spain, England and Germany. The share of domestic drugs in Ukraine and France is lower – 16 % and 45 %, respectively. The leaders among domestic manufacturers in Ukraine are Yuria-Pharm LLC and Astrapharm LLC , in France they are Sanofi Winthrop Industrie , Mylan S.A.S. , Delpharm Tours , Delpharm Lille S.A.S. and Panpharma . In the two countries, the majority of drugs for COPD antibiotic therapy treatment is manufactured as powders for solutions and injections, and as tablets; their share in Ukraine is 41 % and 33 %, in France – 19 % and 59 %, respectively. Monocomponent drugs prevail in Ukraine and France. Since the Ukrainian pharmaceutical market, in comparison with the French drug market, is significantly dominated by foreign drugs, it is important to develop new domestic drugs that would be used in COPD treatment.

A New Visual Cryptography-Based QR Code System for Medication Administration

In health care, medication errors can result in serious health risks to patients, and hospitals require a secure medication administration system to prevent such errors. This paper therefore proposes a secure medication administration method based on threshold sharing technology. When a patient visits a doctor and the doctor prescribes n medications, a photo and the personal information of the patient are encoded into n QR code transparencies that can be decoded by common QR code scanners available for smartphones. The prescription and n QR code transparencies are then stored in a hospital’s medication administration system. When the patient receives their medicine, they can scan these n QR code transparencies using a smartphone to ensure that they have all the medicines prescribed by the doctor; this function is accessible even if the patient’s phone does not have Internet access. The main purpose of the proposed system is to prevent hospitals from giving medicine to the wrong patient, or giving less than the prescribed dosage of medicine to the patient. The focus is not on the internal medicine packaging process in hospitals but on reducing the probability of counter staff giving medicine to the wrong patient. This function is of considerable importance to non-English-speaking people who are not used to reading medicine names in English.

Physico-chemical Analysis of beeswax procured from Mumbai market, Western Ghats (Natural Habitat)

Beeswax is the substance that is obtained from the structure of a honey comb. The bees secrete wax to build the honey combs to store honey. It has rich hydrophobic property, the beeswax is in fact present within cosmetics and body products. Also, beeswax is used in food industry. Beeswax is a complex mixture of hydrocarbons, free fatty acid, esters of fatty acid. Beeswax plays an important role in Ayurvedic medicine, the traditional medicine name with Madhushistha (Beewax). The Madhushistha is used for the care of wound from abrasion or even from burns with topical application. Some references in Ayurvedic granth highlight the use of Madhushistha in combination with other herbal and mineral mixture, like Sikta Taila, Mruddaharshringa, Jatyadi Taila, etc. Beeswax is mainly of two types, natural beeswax and processed beeswax. Natural beeswax is clarified further heating in water with petroleum waxes. Because of high demand and shortage in market, adulteration of beeswax with cheaper materials are common like animal fat, plant oil and petroleum spirits (Paraffin wax). Hence authenticity of beeswax is major concern and that can be determined by using physico-chemical parameters such as- organoleptic test, solubility, Melting point, Spacific gravity, Refractive index, Acid value, Ester value, Saponification value, volatile matter. With this justification the present study is expected to determine the quality status of four different beeswax samples procured from Mumbai market, western ghats (Natural habitat). The physico-chemical analysis revealed that volatile matter is detected in market sample (2) whereas market sample (1) shows higher melting point as compare to beeswax collected from the Natural habitat. Market sample (1,2) of beeswax shows slight adulteration hence natural habitat samples (1,2) of beeswax should be used in medicine preparation.

Dietary Supplements as an Object of Civil Legal Relations in Russia

This paper reviews the legal regulation of the dietary supplement turnover in Russia. Since dietarysupplements are an independent object of civil commerce, they must have certain qualities that distinguishthem, most importantly, from medicines. According to the authors, the dichotomy in the definition of dietarysupplements in the Russian legislation does not allow fully preventing dietary supplements from beingconfused with other food products, medicines, international non-proprietary names of medicines. Theauthors also examine the relationship of dietary supplements with such concepts as comestibles and foodproducts.Method: The authors used the method of comparative and systemic analysis, synthesis, and scientificresearch of the object as an element of civil legal relations.The purpose of the study was to look at dietary supplements as a subject of civil legal relations, to identifyproblems of protecting dietary supplements as objects of intellectual property law.Results: Although since the mid-1990s, active distribution of dietary supplements has begun in Russia, todate, the legal doctrine has not developed the scientific concept of dietary supplements, and the definitionscontained in regulatory acts are contradictory. The analysis of the regulatory framework and judicial practicegives reason to conclude that dietary supplements are recognized as objects of civil legal relations in Russia.They are sold in free circulation, they are movable property, and legislators have established mandatoryregistration for putting these objects into commodity circulation.

The serivation and establishment of the new disease name "Otogenic Vertigo" of integration of Chinese and Western medicine

"Otogenic vertigo()" is a new disease name of modern traditional Chinese medicine(TCM), which is equivalent to otogenic vertigo of modern medicine.TCM has observed vertigo symptoms very early, and otogenic vertigo is included in many diseases recorded in ancient Chinese medicine, such as "xuanmao ()" , "diaoxuan()" , "vertigo()" , "wind vertigo()" , "true vertigo()" , etc. "True vertigo" is closer to the current otogenic vertigo than others. "Otogenic vertigo" is a new disease name created by experts of TCM otorhinolaryngology in the context of integrated Chinese and Western medicine.It was born in the 4th and 5th edition of Otorhinolaryngology of Traditional Chinese Medicine which is national unified textbooks of TCM. "Otogenic vertigo" has become a standard term , and it has been almost uniform definition, as its corresponding modern medicine diseases. The definition of vertigo in modern TCM internal medicine is broad, and otogenic vertigois also included.

Variety and standard arrangement of Yao medicine in Euphorbiaceae

The names, basic sources, medicinal parts, efficacy and standards of the medicinal materials in Euphorbiaceae were systematically collated and analyzed by the textual research for Yao medicine monographs in this paper. The results showed that there were great differences in the names, basic sources, medicinal parts and efficacy of some medicinal materials recorded in different literatures. There were 19 genera and 60 species(including varieties) of Euphorbiaceae of Yao medicine, involving 50 kinds of medicinal materials. Among them, there were 42 kinds of single basic sources medicine, 8 kinds of multi basic sources medicine, 28 kinds of root medicine, 26 kinds of whole plant medicine, 25 kinds of unique Yao medicine, accounting for 50%, 11 kinds of cross with Chinese medicinal materials, accounting for 22%. There were 21 kinds of Yao medicine standards at all levels, but only 1 kind of Laoban medicine and 2 kinds of Yao medicine standards. The Yao medicine in Euphorbiaceae could be named by means of transliteration of Yao language/Yao language transliteration/Chinese medicine name, Laoban medicine, plant morphology, medicinal properties, color and smell of medicine, while the medicinal parts and efficacy of the same medicinal name were different from those of traditional Chinese medicine. Therefore, the name and basic sources of the medicinal materials in Euphorbiaceae were not standardized, and the quality standard is not perfect. The above results provided a reference for the construction and improvement of quality standard system, the promotion of the production of medicinal materials and clinical medication standards, and the further development and utilization of Euphorbiaceae.

Sex and gender medicine: the foundation of gender medicine

"Sex and gender medicine" is the original name of gender medicine. It is important to define medical concepts without ignoring key terminology. The purpose of "sex and gender medicine" is to focus on both sex and gender differences, to analyze how these two sides of the human being overlap and, finally, to improve their medical understanding. On the one hand sex, besides defining male and female, refers to the biological differences among humans, animals, tissues and cells. On the other, the concept of gender is applicable only to humans, and includes identity, roles and relations in the society. However, despite its 20 years of history, gender medicine is still little known. Biological differences among cardiovascular diseases are ignored. Symptoms and their expressions, which may be different in women, are often described as "atypical" because of the masculine vision of the heart attack and pain. Similarly, anxious syndrome is often conceived as the first reason to explain chest discomfort in women. In reality, prejudices and vagueness around women still dominate prevention and medical treatment. Our objective is to distinguish the concepts of sex and gender in order to understand the best way to face differences and medical knowledge in both.

PrEazy : A Road Map from Traditional Prescription System To Digital Prescription System

Fake Prescriptions have emerged lately becoming hazardous for people’s lives; bringing their lives at stake. Drugs like Schedule-H cannot be bought without a doctor's consent and thus cases of such drugs being bought with the help of fake prescriptions have become very common today. Sometimes pharmacists find it hard to identify the medicine names from handwritten descriptions and it may eventually lead to misinterpretation of the prescribed medicine name. We provide a solution to this problem. PrEazy is an android application that provides secured and digital prescriptions such that it reduces the use of fake prescriptions. Also, it is a Paperless Technology making it Environment-Friendly. This application is digital prescription software which transmits communication between doctor, patient and pharmacist.

Automized Pharmacy Using Face Authentication

The main objective of the work is to help the patients in the pharmacy using Automized face recognition system. Nowadays, monitoring health becomes irregular, and that is a major issue facing all patients. To overcome those irregular activities, this concept improvised medical tool such that automized pharmacy is to help the patients to keep up their day to day pills intake process with superior technology and by this process implementing face authentic and mobile integration which gives a more convenient way to keep their medical prescriptions in a periodic manner. The system can also be useful in hospitals where the number of patients is more, and it is difficult to remember the medicine and dosage by the staff. So this system with some updates can also be used in hospitals. The problems such as 1) maintaining the regularity of prescribed dosage is difficult to be remembered in a busy schedule. 2) Remembering the name of medicine to be taken is really difficult. Therefore, the growing need and urgency for in-home healthcare devices and technologies in order to provide patients with electronic tools to support medication self-management is addressed by the above advancement in today’s technology.

Serialized Co-Training-Based Recognition of Medicine Names for Patent Mining and Retrieval

In the retrieval and mining of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) patents, a key step is Chinese word segmentation and named entity recognition. However, the alias phenomenon of traditional Chinese medicines causes great challenges to Chinese word segmentation and named entity recognition in TCM patents, which directly affects the effect of patent mining. Because of the lack of a comprehensive Chinese herbal medicine name thesaurus, traditional thesaurus-based Chinese word segmentation and named entity recognition are not suitable for medicine identification in TCM patents. In view of the present situation, using the language characteristics and structural characteristics of TCM patent texts, a modified and serialized co-training method to recognize medicine names from TCM patent abstract texts is proposed. Experiments show that this method can maintain high accuracy under relatively low time complexity. In addition, this method can also be expanded to the recognition of other named entities in TCM patents, such as disease names, preparation methods, and so on.

Analysis of medication regularity and pharmacodynamic characteristics of traditional Chinese medicine treatment in 444 severe cases of COVID-19

The coronavirus disease 2019(COVID-19) is developing rapidly and posing great threat to public health. There is no effective intervention for the severe patients, and their prognosis is poor. It is worth noting that in the fight against COVID-19, China has always put equal emphasis on both Chinese and Western medicine. Traditional Chinese medicine has played an important role in the whole process. It is of great significance to discuss the rules and characteristics of the prescription of traditional Chinese medicine in the treatment of COVID-19. In this study, information was collected from 444 severe COVID-19 patients who were admitted to a hospital designated to treat patients with severe COVID-19 in Wuhan before March 20, 2020. We collected traditional Chinese medicine prescriptions for patients with severe COVID-19, referred to Chinese Pharmacopoeia to standardize the names of traditional Chinese medicine, and extract the property, flavor and channel tropism of traditional Chinese medicines to analyze the rules of the prescriptions. IBM SPSS Modeler 18.0 software was used to conduct correlation analysis of traditional Chinese medicine. Effective traditional Chinese medicines against COVID-19 was identified by the TCMATCOV platform. In the end, 1 532 effective prescriptions were included. Among them, the high-frequency drugs are Poria, Astragali Radix, Pogostemonis Herba, Armeniacae Semen Amarum, Atractylodis Macrocephalae Rhizoma, Pinelliae Rhizoma, Glycyrrhizae Radix et Rhizoma, Magnoliae Officinalis Cortex, Ephedrae Herba, Cinna-momi Ramulus. Most of the drugs have the following functions: resolving dampness, replenishing deficiency, resolving phlegm, cough, and asthma. The core combinations are Pogostemonis Herba-Poria, Astragali Radix-Pogostemonis Herba-Poria, Amomi Fructus-Poria, Amomi Fructus-Pogostemonis Herba, Amomi Fructus-Astragali Radix. The majority of the medicines are with cold and warm properties, and the proportions are 41.03% and 38.46%, respectively. The medicinal flavors are mainly concentrated in sweet and bitter, and the proportions are 34.71% and 30.58%, respectively. The meridian of the drug is more into the lung, stomach and spleen, with lung accounting for 22.87%. From the analysis of high-frequency drugs to the core combinations, one can see that the main treatment principle for severe COVID-19 is to remove internal and external dampness, protect the spleen and stomach, remove evil energy, and support righteousness. TCMATCOV platform was used to calculate the network disturbances of the high-frequency drugs. It was found that the traditional Chinese medicine with a high disturbance score accounted for a high proportion of the classic anti-COVID-19 prescriptions used by clinicians. Among them, the drugs with top scores are Ephedrae Herba, Citri Reticulatae Pericarpium, Eupatorii Herba, Platycodonis Radix, Cinnamomi Ramulus, Astragali Radix, Magnoliae Officinalis Cortex, Atractylodis Macrocephalae Rhizoma, Pogostemonis Herba, Scutellariae Radix. After a further exploration of the action targets, it was showed that disease-specific factor TNF was the target of the above ten drugs, and traditional Chinese medicine can exert anti-inflammatory and immune-modulating effects.

THE SPECIFICS OF TEACHING LATIN ON VETERINARY FACULTIES OF AGRICULTURAL HIGHER EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS

This article is devoted to the features and benefits of teaching Latin on veterinary faculties of agricultural institutions of higher education. The position of the discipline in training programs for would-be specialists in «Veterinary», « Veterinary expertise», «Small domestic and exotic animals’ diseases» is determined. Both general didactical principles of new language presentation and specific features of medical and veterinary students training are considered as applied to agricultural institutions of higher education. The main peculiarity of professional training on veterinary faculties of agricultural higher institutions is prevailing of lexical aspects over grammar ones unlike teaching of Latin for lawyers, philologists and botanists. The order of grammar aspects such as verb, noun, and adjective is shown to be connected with the applied professional phenomena like recipes making, diagnosis discussing and anatomy studying. Particular attention is paid to the necessity of comparing of introduced lexical units with both Russian language and studied foreign language. The conclusion is made that this comparison enables the students to use Latin terms, names of organs, diseases and medicines accurately. Of great value is also the investigation of the principles of transliteration medicine names investigation. The author stresses the point that students of medical educational institutions as well as students of veterinary faculties of agricultural educational institutions should write the names of medicines in recipes automatically.

Study on intelligent syndrome differentiation neural network model of stomachache in traditional Chinese medicine based on the real world

Stomachache is not only disease name of Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) but also the clinical symptom. It is a common and multiple diseases. TCM has its particular advantage in clinical treatment of stomachache. Syndrome differentiation is an important concept in TCM practice. The therapeutic process is virtually a nonlinear mapping process from clinical symptom to syndrome diagnosis with processing and seeking rules from mass data. Artificial neutral network has strong learning ability for nonlinear relationship. Artificial neutral network has been widely used to TCM area where the multiple factors, multilevel, nonlinear problem accompanied by a large number of optimization exist.We present an original experimental method to apply the improved third-order convergence LM algorithm to intelligent syndrome differentiation for the first time, and compare the predicted ability of Levenberg-Marquardt (LM) algorithm and the improved third-order convergence LM algorithm in syndrome differentiation.In this study, 2436 cases of stomachache electronic medical data from hospital information system, and then the real world data were normalized and standardized. Afterwards, LM algorithm and the improved third-order convergence LM algorithm were used to build the Back Propagation (BP) neural network model for intelligent syndrome differentiation of stomachache on Matlab, respectively. Finally, the differentiation performance of the 2 models was tested and analyzed.The testing results showed that the improved third-order convergence LM algorithm model has better average prediction and diagnosis accuracy, especially in predicting "liver-stomach disharmony" and "stomach yang deficiency", is above 95%.By effectively using the self-learning and auto-update ability of the BP neural network, the intelligent syndrome differentiation model of TCM can fully approach the real side of syndrome differentiation, and shows excellent predicted ability of syndrome differentiation.

Discriminations for the Chinese Name of Gelsemium elegans

In this paper, an in-depth historical research and name analysis on the confusion of homonymous of different herbs and homonyms between the Chinese name of the plant and the name of medicinal materials of Gelsemium elegans (Gardn. & champ.) Benth was made. There are more than 38 different general name and distinct names in the description of ancient and modern literature. After collating and analyzing, it is believed that some names are caused by miswriting or misunderstanding of the form and function. The author proposes that the Chinese name of G. elegans and the medicinal name of its whole medicinal material should be " Gelsemium elegans " (Gou Wen) as the general name, and puts forward suggestions for strengthening the research and arrangement of the name of Chinese materia medica.

Medicinal plants used in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia: A gender perspective

Ethnopharmacological relevanceVery few studies examining quantitatively gender differences in the knowledge and use of medicinal plants exist for the Arab world. Differences in ethnobotanical knowledge of medicinal plants between men and women in Jeddah are explored here for the first time. Aim of the studyOur study aims to document urban medicinal plant knowledge in Jeddah, and to answer the following questions: (1) What medicinal plants are used by Saudis in Jeddah? (2) To what extent do men and women use medicinal plants? (3) Are plants used by men significantly different to those used by women? And, (4) do men and women learn about medicinal plants in different ways? Given the gendered nature of space and relations in the Arab world, we hypothesise that men and women learn about plants in different ways and that this will contribute to explain any possible differences. Materials and methodsEthnobotanical fieldwork took place in Jeddah from August 2018 to September 2019. Individual free-listing, semi-structured interviews and an online survey questionnaire were carried out to document local medicinal plant. In total, 50 men and 50 women were interviewed face-to-face and 344 people responded to the questionnaire, of which 154 were men and 190 were women. ResultsA total of 94 medicinal plant vernacular names were documented representing 85 different plant species belonging to 37 families. Men cited 63 plants (33 plant families) and women 83 (36 plant families). Sixty-one plants were cited by both men and women, two only by men and 22 only by women. Men and women learn in similar ways, but generally use medicinal plants to treat different ailments. Women rely on medicinal plant use to a larger extent. ConclusionMedicinal plant use is dependent on gendered social roles and experience, as well as preference for biomedicine or medicinal plant use. Men and women use similar plants, but women have greater knowledge that increases with age. Given the food-medicine continuum, women's double role of family food and care providers may explain their expertise in medicinal plant use.

Development and exploratory analysis of software to detect look-alike, sound-alike medicine names

Background‘Look-alike, sound-alike’ (LASA) medicines may be confused by prescribers, pharmacists, nurses and patients, with serious consequences for patient safety. The current research aimed to develop and trial software to proactively identify LASA medicines by computing medicine name similarity scores. MethodsLiterature review identified open-source software from the United States Food and Drug Administration for screening of proposed medicine names. We adapted and refined this software to compute similarity scores (0.0000–1.0000) for all possible pairs of medicines registered in Australia. Two-fold exploratory analysis compared:•Computed similarity scores vs manually-calculated similarity scores that had used a different algorithm and underpinned development of Australia’s 2011 Tall Man Lettering List (‘the 2011 List’)•Computed risk category vs expert-consensus risk category that underpinned the 2011 List. ResultsScreening of the Australian medicines register identified 7,750 medicine pairs with at least moderate (arbitrarily ≥0.6600) name similarity, including many oncology, immunomodulating and neuromuscular-blocking medicines. Computed similarity scores and resulting risk categories demonstrated a modest correlation with the manually-calculated similarity scores (r = 0.324, p < 0.002, 95 % CI 0.119–0.529). However, agreement between the resulting risk categories was not significant (Cohen’s kappa = −0.162, standard error = 0.063). ConclusionsThe software (LASA v2) has potential to identify pairs of confusable medicines. It is recommended to supplement incident reports in risk-management programs, and to facilitate pre-screening of medicine names prior to brand/trade name approval and inclusion of medicines in formularies.

Rapid and Simple Species Identification of Cicada Exuviae Using COI-Based SCAR Assay.

Cicadidae periostracum (CP), the medicinal name of cicada exuviae, is well-known insect-derived traditional medicine with various pharmacological effects, e.g., anticonvulsive, anti-inflammatory, antitussive, and anticancer effects; it is also beneficial for the treatment of Parkinson’s disease. For appropriate CP application, accurate species identification is essential. The Korean pharmacopoeia and the pharmacopoeia of the People’s Republic of China define Cryptotympana atrata as the only authentic source of CP. Species identification of commercially distributed CP based on morphological features, however, is difficult because of the combined packaging of many cicada exuviae in markets, damage during distribution, and processing into powder form. DNA-based molecular markers are an excellent alternative to morphological detection. In this study, the mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit I sequences of C. atrata, Meimuna opalifera, Platypleura kaempferi, and Hyalessa maculaticollis were analyzed. On the basis of sequence alignments, we developed sequence-characterized amplified-region (SCAR) markers for efficient species identification. These markers successfully discriminated C. atrata from the three other cicada species, and detected the adulteration of market CP samples. This SCAR assay is a rapid, simple, cheap, reliable, and reproducible method for species identification, regardless of sample form and status, and contributes to CP quality control.

Latin and Greek in Contemporary Names of Human Medicines on the Polish Market

Łacina i greka w świecie współczesnego nazewnictwa farmaceutycznego w Polsce&#x0D; Celem artykułu jest ukazanie, że słowa pochodzące z łaciny i greki są nadal efektywnie wykorzystywane w polskiej terminologii farmaceutycznej na przykładzie nazw handlowych leków oraz form, w jakich owe terminy pojawiają się w interesującym autora nazewnictwie. Autor pracy definiuje pewne zauważalne i charakterystyczne paradygmaty pojawiania się form łacińskich i greckich, które występują w konkretnych wyodrębnionych w artykule grupach leków, wskazuje na pewne widoczne tendencje w zastosowaniu języków innych niż klasyczne oraz podkreśla, jak ogromne znaczenie ma łacina i greka w ciągle rozwijającym się polskim przemyśle farmaceutycznym.