As the advancements in the medical technology and healthcare develop through the years, combinational therapy has evolved to be an important treatment modality in many disease settings, including cancer, cardiovascular disease and infectious diseases. In an effort to alleviate "pill burden" and improve patient compliance, fixed dose combinations (FDCs) have been developed to be used as effective therapeutics. Among all FDCs, the category of drug-drug molecular complexes has been proven an efficient methodology in designing and treating diseases, with many drugs being approved.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFront Endocrinol (Lausanne)
August 2022
Aims: To explore the clinical characteristics among elderly (aged ≥60 years) patients with type 2 diabetes (T2DM) of different durations.
Methods: Clinical characteristics were investigated in 3840 elderly T2DM patients according to their different durations of diabetes (< 1 year, 1~5 years, 5~10 years, and ≥ 10 years). Kruskal-Wallis and Dunn tests were used to assess the differences among groups for continuous variables.
Biol Trace Elem Res
February 2023
The study aimed to investigate the association between nickel exposure and the presence of diabetes (DM). The participants were analyzed from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys (NHANES) 2017-2018. Urinary nickel exposure was measured using inductively coupled-plasma mass spectrometry.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCelecoxib, an anti-inflammatory drug for pain and arthritis, is currently only available in capsule form. To reduce the onset time for a faster action and to lower the manufacturing cost, the tablet dosage form is more preferred. However, the commercial celecoxib (Form III) is not suitable for direct compression (DC) tablet manufacture due to poor flow, low bulk density, and tablet lamination.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: To evaluate achievement of comprehensive controls among patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) in different age groups.
Results: The elderly patients had higher control rates for BMI (44.36%), TC (50.
Punch-sticking during tablet compression is a common problem for many active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), which renders tablet formulation development challenging. Herein, we demonstrate that the punch-sticking propensity of a highly sticky API, celecoxib (CEL), can be effectively reduced by spherical crystallization enabled by a polymer assisted quasi-emulsion solvent diffusion (QESD) process. Among three commonly used pharmaceutical polymers, poly(vinylpyrrolidone) (PVP), hydroxypropyl cellulose (HPC), and hydroxypropyl methylcellulose (HPMC), HPMC was the most effective in stabilizing the transient emulsion during QESD and retarding the coalescence of emulsion droplets and the initiation of CEL crystallization.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPowder adhesion or sticking onto punches is one of the outstanding issues in pharmaceutical tablet manufacturing. We show in this work that, at comparable particle sizes, the acesulfame potassium exhibited pronouncedly reduced propensity to punch sticking than acesulfame. Detailed analyses revealed strong correlation between sticking propensity and crystal mechanical properties and surface chemistry.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFKidney Blood Press Res
November 2018
Background/aims: We aimed to explore whether thyroid function within a normal range is associated with the estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) and the incidence of chronic kidney disease (CKD) in a large Chinese population.
Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional study that included 10,859 euthyroid individuals who underwent an annual regular health checkup in Jiangsu Province Official Hospital between August 2012 and August 2013. We measured the thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH), free triiodothyronine (FT3) and free thyroxine (FT4) levels using a Roche modular analytics E170 and then calculated the eGFR using the Chinese modified Modification of Diet in Renal Disease (CMDRD) equation.
Appropriate selection of excipient grade during tablet formulation development depends on thorough knowledge in their compaction and flow properties. Each chemically unique pharmaceutical excipient is usually available in several commercial grades that are widely different in powder properties, which influence their performance for a specific formulation application. In this work, 11 grades of mannitol were systematically characterized, in terms of their particulate, flow and tableting properties, and compared against 5 grades of lactose.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPunch sticking is a complex phenomenon influenced primarily by particle size, tooling surface roughness, tooling design, and tooling construction material. When particle and environmental factors are controlled, compaction pressure has a distinct effect on punch sticking behavior for a given active pharmaceutical ingredient (API). This research focuses on the effect of compaction pressure on punch sticking using 5 compounds with different sticking propensities.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAlthough graphene oxide lamellar membranes (GOLMs) are effective in blocking large organic molecules and nanoparticles for nanofiltration and ultrafiltration, water desalination with GOLM is challenging, with seriously controversial results. Here, a combined experimental and molecular dynamics simulation study shows that intrinsic high water/ion selectivity of GOLM was achieved in concentration gradient-driven diffusion, showing great promise in water desalination. However, in pressure-driven filtration the salt rejection was poor.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWhen the dimensionality of layered materials is reduced to the physical limit, an ultimate two-dimensional (2D) anisotropy and/or confinement effect may bring about extraordinary physical and chemical properties. Layered double hydroxides (LDHs), bearing abundant hydroxyl groups covalently bonded within 2D host layers, have been proposed as inorganic anion conductors. However, typical hydroxyl ion conductivities for bulk or lamellar LDHs, generally up to 10 S cm, are considered not high enough for practical applications.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSignificant achievements have been made on the development of next-generation filtration and separation membranes using graphene materials, as graphene-based membranes can afford numerous novel mass-transport properties that are not possible in state-of-art commercial membranes, making them promising in areas such as membrane separation, water desalination, proton conductors, energy storage and conversion, etc. The latest developments on understanding mass transport through graphene-based membranes, including perfect graphene lattice, nanoporous graphene and graphene oxide membranes are reviewed here in relation to their potential applications. A summary and outlook is further provided on the opportunities and challenges in this arising field.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA graphene/n-type silicon (n-Si) heterojunction has been demonstrated to exhibit strong rectifying behavior and high photoresponsivity, which can be utilized for the development of high-performance photodetectors. However, graphene/n-Si heterojunction photodetectors reported previously suffer from relatively low specific detectivity due to large dark current. Here, by introducing a thin interfacial oxide layer, the dark current of graphene/n-Si heterojunction has been reduced by two orders of magnitude at zero bias.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFACS Appl Mater Interfaces
July 2015
The compact layer plays an important role in conducting electrons and blocking holes in perovskite solar cells (PSCs). Here, we use a two-dimensional titania nanosheet (TNS) thin film as the compact layer in CH3NH3PbI3 PSCs. TNS thin films with thicknesses ranging from 8 to 75 nm were prepared by an electrophoretic deposition method from a dilute TNS/tetrabutylammonium hydroxide solution.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Nanosci Nanotechnol
August 2014
It needs to assemble the industrial CNT powders into macroscopic porous surface composite to utilize the surface properties of CNTs, as well as to prevent them entering into environments. We demonstrate a method to fabricate the surface composites from CNTs and polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) by electrospinning, where CNTs distribute firmly and mainly on the surface PVP nanofibers. The CNTs/PVP surface composites have high pore volume of 10 cc/g and remarkable CNTs load of 98%.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHydrogen plays a crucial role in the chemical vapor deposition (CVD) growth of graphene. Here, we have revealed the roles of hydrogen in the two-step CVD growth of MoS2. Our study demonstrates that hydrogen acts as the following: (i) an inhibitor of the thermal-induced etching effect in the continuous film growth process; and (ii) a promoter of the desulfurization reaction by decreasing the S/Mo atomic ratio and the oxidation reaction of the obtained MoSx (0 < x < 2) films.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe report the design and preparation of graphene and polyaniline (PANI) woven-fabric composite films by in situ electropolymerization. The introduction of PANI greatly improves the electrochemical properties of solid-state supercapacitors which possess capacitances as high as 23 mF cm(-2), and exhibit excellent cycling stability with ∼ 100% capacitance retention after 2000 cycles. The devices have displayed superior flexibility with improved areal specific capacitances to 118% during deformation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFChem Commun (Camb)
February 2015
Based on isotope labelling, we found that liquid water can afford an ultrafast permeation through graphene-based nanochannels with a diffusion coefficient 4-5 orders of magnitude greater than in the bulk case. When dissolving ions in sources, the diffusion coefficient of ions through graphene channels lies in the same order of magnitude as water, while the ion diffusion is slightly faster than water, indicating that the ions are mainly transported by water flows and the delicate interactions between ions and nanocapillary walls also take effect in the accelerated ion transportation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAll carbon coaxial supercapacitors based on hollow carbon nanotube (CNT) sleeve structure are assembled and tested. The key advantage of the structure is that the inner core electrode is variable from CNT sleeve sponges, to CNT fibers, reduced graphene oxide fibers, and graphene woven fabrics. By changing core electrodes from sleeve sponges to CNT fibers, the electrochemical performance has been significantly enhanced.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA mild annealing procedure was recently proposed for the scalable enhancement of graphene oxide (GO) properties with the oxygen content preserved, which was demonstrated to be attributed to the thermally driven phase separation. In this work, the structure evolution of GO with mild annealing is closely investigated. It reveals that in addition to phase separation, the transformation of oxygen functionalities also occurs, which leads to the slight reduction of GO membranes and furthers the enhancement of GO properties.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe control of ion trans-membrane transport through graphene oxide (GO) membranes is achieved by electric and magnetic fields. Electric field can either increase or decrease the ion transport through GO membranes depending on its direction, and magnetic field can enhance the ion penetration monotonically. When electric field is applied across GO membrane, excellent control of ion fluidic flows can be done.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNanoscale Res Lett
September 2014
Flexible heterojunction solar cells were fabricated from carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and mono-crystalline Si thin films at room temperature. The Si thin films with thickness less than 50 μm are prepared by chemically etching Si wafer in a KOH solution. The initial efficiency of the thin-film solar cell varies from approximately 3% to 5%.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDue to its unique electromechanical properties, nanomaterial has become a promising material for use in the sensing elements of strain sensors. Tensile strain is the type of deformation most intensively studied. Torsion is another deformation occurring in everyday life, but is less well understood.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF