Pre-clinical Models for Geriatric Pharmacotherapy.

With ageing of the population worldwide and discovery of new medications for prevention and management of age-related conditions, there is increasing use of medications by older adults. There are international efforts to increase the representativeness of participants in clinical trials to match the intended real-world users of the medications across a range of characteristics including age, multimorbidity, polypharmacy and frailty. Currently, much of the data on medication-related harm in older adults are from pharmacovigilance studies.

Ageing and Polypharmacy in Mesenchymal Stromal Cells: Metabolic Impact Assessed by Hyperspectral Imaging of Autofluorescence.

The impact of age on mesenchymal stromal cell (MSC) characteristics has been well researched. However, increased age is concomitant with increased prevalence of polypharmacy. This adjustable factor may have further implications for the functionality of MSCs and the effectiveness of autologous MSC procedures.

Biofiltration of butyl acetate with three packing material mixtures, with and without biochar.

Two cost-effective packing materials were used for butyl acetate removal in lab-scale biofilters, namely waste spruce root wood chips and biochar obtained as a byproduct from a wood gasifier. Three biofilters packed with spruce root wood chips: without biochar (SRWC), a similar one with 10% of biochar (SRWC-B) and that with 10% of biochar impregnated with a nitrogen fertilizer (SRWC-IB) showed similar yet differing maximum elimination capacities of 206 ± 27, 275 ± 21 and 294 ± 20 g m h, respectively, enabling high pollutant removal efficiency (>95% at moderate loads) and stable performance. The original biochar adsorption capacity was high (208 ± 6 mg g), but near 70% of it was lost after a 300-day biofilter operation.

Polypharmacy and precision medicine.

Precision medicine is an approach to maximise the effectiveness of disease treatment and prevention and minimise harm from medications by considering relevant demographic, clinical, genomic and environmental factors in making treatment decisions. Precision medicine is complex, even for decisions about single drugs for single diseases, as it requires expert consideration of multiple measurable factors that affect pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics, and many patient-specific variables. Given the increasing number of patients with multiple conditions and medications, there is a need to apply lessons learned from precision medicine in monotherapy and single disease management to optimise polypharmacy.