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Malaria remains a major cause of death and disability worldwide and
is endemic to much of Africa, South America, and southeast Asia.
Other malaria risk areas include the Middle east, some countries in
Central America and Polynesia, with most other continents virtually
free of the disease. The choice between RDTs and microscopy depends
on local circumstances, including the skills available, patient
case-load, epidemiology of malaria and the possible use of
microscopy for the diagnosis of other diseases. Where the case-load
of fever patients is high, microscopy is likely to be less
expensive than RDTs, but may be less operationally feasible.
Microscopy has further advantages in that it can be used for
speciation and quantification of parasites, and to assess response
to antimalarial treatment. Microscopy can also be used in the
identification of other causes of fever. However, a major drawback
of light microscopy is its requirement for well-trained, skilled
staff and, usually, an energy source to power the microscope.
HERBAL medicine is still the mainstay of about 75-80% of the world
population, mainly in the developing countries, for primary health
care because of better cultural acceptability, better compatibility
with the human body and lesser side effects. However, the last few
years have seen a major increase in their use in the developed
world. In Germany and France, many herbs and herbal extracts are
used as prescription drugs and their sales in the countries of
European Union were around $ 6 billion in 1991 and may be over $ 20
billion now. In USA, herbal drugs are currently sold in health food
stores with a turnover of about $ 4 billion in 1996 which is
anticipated to double by the turn of the century1. In India, the
herbal drug market is about $ one billion and the export of
plant-based crude drugs is around $ 80 million2 . Herbal medicines
also find market as nutraceuticals (health foods) whose current
market is estimated at about $ 80-250 billion in USA and also in
Europe.
Tablet is the most popular among all dosage forms existing today
because of its convenience of self administration, compactness and
easy manufacturing; however hand tremors, dysphasia in case of
geriatric patients, the underdeveloped muscular and nervous systems
in young individuals and h case of uncooperative patients, the
problem of swallowing is common phenomenon which leads to poor
patient compliance To overcome these drawbacks, mouth dissolving
tablets (MDT) or orally disintegrating tablets; (ODT) has emerged
as alternative oral dosage forms. These are novel types; of tablets
that disintegrate/dissolve/ disperse in saliva within few seconds'.
According to European Pharmacopoeia, the ODT should
disperse/disintegrate in less than three minutes. The basic
approach used in development of MDT is the use of
superdisintegrants like Cross linked carboxymelhylcellulose
(Croscarmeliose), Sodium starch glycol ate (Primogel, Explotab).
Polyvinylpyrrolidone (Polyplasdone) etc. which provide
instantaneous disintegration of tablet after putting on tongue,
thereby releasing the drug in saliva.
Information technology provides several databases, data analysis
tools, and knowledge extraction techniques in almost every facet of
life. In pharmaceutical sciences, several successful attempts are
being made under the umbrella of pharmacoinformatics (synonymously
referred to as pharmainformatics).Chemoinformatics and
bioinformatics contribute directly to drug discovery through
virtual screening. Topics like neuroinformatics, immunoinformatics,
vaccine informatics, and biosystem informatics contribute
indirectly by providing necessary inputs for pharmaceutical design
in this area. Topics like metabolomics, toxicoinformatics, and ADME
informatics arecontributing to this fi eld by providing information
regarding the fate of a NCE/lead in vitro and in vivo
conditions.The integration of back - end technologies (for storing
and representing chemical structure and chemical libraries) and
front - end technologies opportunities in chemoinformatics.
Wound is defined simply as the disruption of the cellular and
anatomic continuity of a tissue. Wound may be produced by physical,
chemical, thermal, microbial or immunological insult to the tissue.
Attention should be directed towards discovering an agent, which
will accelerate wound healing either when it is progressing
normally, when it is suppressed by various agents like
corticosteroids, anti neoplastics.or non- steroidal
anti-inflammatory agents. Medical treatment of wound includes
administration of drugs either locally (topical) or systemically
(oral or parenteral) in an attempt to aid wound repair
Drug research encompasses several diverse disciplines united by a
common goal, namely the development of novel therapeutic agents.
The search for new drugs can be divided functionally into two
stages: discovery and development. The former consists of setting
up a working hypothesis of the target enzyme or receptor for a
particular disease, establishing suitable models (or surrogate
markers) to test biological activities, and screening the new drug
molecules for in vitro and/or in vivo biological activities. In the
development stage, efforts are focused on evaluation of the
toxicity and efficacy of new drug candidates.Recent surveys
indicate that the average new chemical entity taken to market in
the United States requires 10 to 15 years of research and costs
more than $300 million. Once the target enzyme or receptor is
identified, medicinal chemists use a variety of empirical and
semiempirical structure-activity relationships to modify the
chemical structure of a compound to maximize its in vitro activity.
Sustained release of macromolecular drugs from polymeric matrices
has received increasing attention in recent years. Vaccines that
are required to be given in multiple divided doses are not
efficacious if only one dose is given without boosting. In order to
be effective, most vaccines require two or three booster doses
after primary immunization. Therefore, the conversion of multiple
dose vaccines into single dose vaccines may represent an important
advance. Among the various tentative for improving the
administration of proteins, the microencapsulation into
biodegradable polymers represents a practical and promising
approachControlled drug delivery technology using biodegradable
polymers as carriers represents one of the most rapidly advancing
area of science.
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