Quantitative structure-property relationships were developed for predicting the enhancement of dissolution rate of the model lipophilic drug Oxazepam (Oxa) from blends (BLs) with 12 structurally different carriers at three different drug/carrier weight ratios (1/5, 1/10, and 1/20). To this end, 36 BLs were prepared by the solvent-evaporation method and characterized by spectroscopic (FT-IR), th...

It is a well-known fact that alcohol affects sex hormone levels in males. Even in the absence of liver dysfunction, there is still a direct toxic effect of ethanol on testosterone synthesis resulting in acutely decreased values. This study is based on 29 male alcoholics without severe signs of liver disease treated on the alcohol detoxification ward at Huddinge hospital in Stockholm, Sweden dur...

OBJECTIVE To identify risk factors for becoming an excessive user over time. SETTING Prescription database study over five years. SUBJECTS AND METHOD Norwegians between 30 and 60 years with a first dispensation of a benzodiazepine during 2006, encompassing 23 227 individuals. A Cox hazard regression model was defined, initially stratifying on gender, age, county, previous relevant drug disp...

A case of serial killing by poisoning by a 59-year-old practical nurse is discussed. Following a report by an emergency-room doctor of an attempted murder, police performed an investigation into all deaths of patients in the nurse's care. Earlier, a medico-legal cause-of-death investigation had been performed on two of these cadavers, but in the other three cases the death certificate had been ...

Benzodiazepines are a commonly abused class of drugs; requiring analytical techniques that can separate and detect the drugs in a rapid time period. In this paper, the two-dimensional separation of five benzodiazepines was shown by electrospray ionization (ESI) ion mobility spectrometry (IMS)–mass spectrometry (MS). In this study, both the two dimensions of separation (m/z and mobility) and the...

This study examined the potential of abalone β-glucuronidase as a viable and cost effective alternative to current hydrolysis procedures using acid, Helix pomatia β-glucuronidase and Escherichia coli β-glucuronidase. Abalone β-glucuronidase successfully hydrolyzed oxazepam-glucuronide and lorazepam-glucuronide within 5% of the spiked control concentration. Benzodiazepines present in authentic u...

New hits against HIV-1 wild-type and Y181C drug-resistant reverse transcriptases were predicted taking into account the possibility of some of the known metabolism interactions. In silico hits against a set of antitargets (i.e., proteins or nucleic acids that are off-targets from the desired pharmaceutical target objective) are used to predict a simple, visual measure of possible interactions f...