Wikipedia Drug Safety Advisory Committee: Distilling a Drug Adverse Effect Reference Set Using Wisdom of the Crowd

Large datasets of relational medical data, such as the adverse effects of drugs or vaccines, typically attain their large size, by relying on automatic, or semi-automatic, methods for generation. This often comes with a compromise on the precision of generated data, which can be at least partially alleviated by having experts curate the data. Since having experts review a large dataset can be costly and time consuming, here we suggest using Wikipedia for this task - that is, augment the automatic generation step by an automatic curation step based on the expert knowledge accumulated in Wikipedia. We use the method to curate two large adverse drug effects datasets, and show that the obtained datasets have a much higher precision relative to their originating ones.

Mycophenolate Mofetil-induced Oral Ulcerations in a Kidney Transplant Recipient

Introduction: Mycophenolate Mofetil (MMF) is an immunosuppressive drug usually used in kidney transplants to prevent rejection. It has various adverse effects such as leucopenia, anemia, diarrhea but Mouth ulcers are rarely reported. Methods: We present a case report of MMF-induced mouth ulcers in an African patient. Case Report: A 41-year-old African-male patient has painful oral ulcers which developed 5 months after kidney transplantation. The immunosuppressive maintenance regimen comprised Steroids, Tacrolimus and MMF. Results: These ulcers were firstly related to a fungic or viral infection so the patient was prescribed Fluconazole and Aciclovir without any improvement. Then, Tacrolimus blood level was checked and it was in a therapeutic range. Finally, we decide to stop MMF and the ulcers healed quickly. Discussion: Oral ulcers are frequently seen complications in immunosuppressant patient but are rarely described with MMF. These ulcers can become large and very painful and degrade patient's life quality. So when infections causes are excluded, we have to keep in mind that these ulcers can be a drug adverse effect.

Polymeric nanoparticles as carrier for targeted and controlled delivery of anticancer agents

In recent decades, many novel methods by using nanoparticles (NPs) have been investigated for diagnosis, drug delivery and treatment of cancer. Accordingly, the potential of NPs as carriers is very significant for the delivery of anticancer drugs, because cancer treatment with NPs has led to the improvement of some of the drug delivery limitations such as low blood circulation time and bioavailability, lack of water solubility, drug adverse effect. In addition, the NPs protect drugs against enzymatic degradation and can lead to the targeted and/or controlled release of the drug. The present review focuses on the potential of NPs that can help the targeted and/or controlled delivery of anticancer agents for cancer therapy.

FUTURE PERSPECTIVES OF PHARMACOVIGILANCE IN ACCORDANCE WITH CURRENT

India’s participation in multinational trials has increased in past few years. This review article provides information regarding overview of the Pharmacovigilance (PV) system in India, focusing on the current scenario, its development and the challenges faced shows PV will lead robust of its tremendous effect in upcoming future. PV in India relies mainly upon the spontaneous reporting of adverse drug events and there is an improvement in the number of given reports after regular training and awareness programmes. To increase the post marketing data collection of drug adverse effect pharnacovigilance programme of India has taken an initiative by launching a toll free number for consumers to report. Actually a change in way of thinking is necessary for doctor-Pharmacist, patients, regulatory bodies and pharmaceutical industries. Pharmacovigilance will provide a better and improved future of pharmaceutical industry alongwith carrier opportunities.

Pharmacokinetics of citicoline after intravenous and intramuscular administration in dogs

Background: New studies have confirmed the role of citicoline in reversing different pathological conditions in canine medicine, but dosing regimens of this drug has not yet been investigated in dogs. Using a high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) system, this study aims to quantify the levels of citicoline in dogs plasma after intravenous (IV) and intramuscular (IM) administration.Design and methods: The subjects of this study were 12 male, mixed breed healthy dogs that were approximately 2 to 3 years old and had a body weight between 15 and 25 kg. Plasma samples were extracted following protein precipitation. Samples were eluted from the column at flow rate of 0.7ml min-1. Solvents were degassed. The PH of the mobile phase of HPLC grade acetonitrile: water (20:80, v/v) was adjusted to 3.0 using 1% orthophosphoric acid. Both sample and standard solutions were filtered through 0.22 µm membrane filter. A sample volume of 20 microliter was injected to HPLC to obtain a standard curve.Results: No clinical signs or drug adverse effect was noticed in animals during and after the period of administration of citicoline. Measuring plasma concentration of citicoline sodium after IV and IM administration showed biphasic plasma peaks which occured at 15 minutes and 5 hours after the drug administration in dogs. Conclusions: Giving the drug once a day with 30-50 mg/kg dosage or twice daily with 15-30 mg/kg dosage would cause their levels to remain elevated for much of the day and doesn’t have any serious adverse effect.

Investigating side effect modules in the interactome and their use in drug adverse effect discovery

One of the biggest challenges in drug development is increasing costs of bringing new drugs to the market. Many candidate drugs fail during phase II and III trials due to unexpected side effects and experimental methods remain cost ineffective for large scale discovery of adverse effects. Alternatively, computational methods are used to characterize drug side effects, but they often rely on training predictors based on drug and side effect similarity. Moreover, these methods are typically tailored to the underlying data set and provide little mechanistic insights on the predicted associations. In this study, we investigate the role of network topology in explaining observed side effects of drugs. We find that drug targets are closer in the interactome to the proteins inducing the known side effects of the drug compared to the proteins associated with the rest of the side effects. We show that the interactome based proximity can be used to identify side effects and we highlight a use case in which interactome-based side effect prediction can give insights on drug side effects observed in the clinic.