Nontuberculosis mycobacteria infections: would there be pharmacodynamics without pharmacokinetics?

Management of Infection with Nontuberculosis Mycobacteria

The nontuberculosis mycobacteria are often naturally resistant to the conventional antibiotics and to antituberculosis drugs (1–3). In addition, providing advice for the treatment of nontuberculosis is complicated by the variable and changing designations of these organisms, the heterogeneity of the clinical syndromes and patients, and the relative lack of controlled clinical trials (1,2). This...

Where Would We Be Without Counterfactuals?

One hundred years ago this Sunday, on November th, , Bertrand Russell delivered the Inaugural Address to the Aristotelian Society’s thirty-fourth session – it was Russell’s second year as President. His lecture was entitled ‘On the Notion of Cause’, and as the Proceedings here note, a discussion followed in which a number of members took part. Outside the Aristotelian Society, the discussion co...

Pharmacokinetics/ Pharmacodynamics

Rapid susceptibility testing for nontuberculosis mycobacteria using flow cytometry.

We demonstrated previously that susceptibility testing of Mycobacterium tuberculosis could be accomplished within 24 h after the organisms were incubated with antituberculosis agents by using fluorescein diacetate (FDA) staining and flow cytometry. Continued studies have now shown that assay suspensions containing M. avium, M. fortuitum, M. gordonae, or M. marinum incubated with various concent...

Topiramate: pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics.

Topiramate is a structurally novel anti-epileptic drug with at least 3 postulated mechanisms of action including: 1) potentiation of GABA responses, 2) impairment of AMPA/kainate glutamate receptors and 3) suppression of high frequency action potential firing. It has a favourable pharmacokinetic profile with rapid absorption, good bio-availability, linear pharmacokinetics, relatively long half-...