Antimicrobial stewardship in rural nursing homes: Impact of interprofessional education and clinical decision tool implementation on urinary tract infection treatment in a cluster randomized trial.

Objectives: To measure the impact of an antimicrobial stewardship initiative on the rate of urine culture testing and antimicrobial prescribing for urinary tract infections (UTIs) between control and intervention sites. Secondary objectives included evaluation of potential harms of the intervention and identifying characteristics of the population prescribed antimicrobials for UTI.

Design: Cluster randomized controlled trial.

Health Canada/BIOTECanada Summit on regulatory and clinical topics related to subsequent entry biologics (biosimilars), Ottawa, Canada, 14 May 2012.

In May 2012, Health Canada and other participants held a National Summit on Subsequent Entry Biologics (SEBs). Health Canada released a guidance document in March 2010 describing policy positions and data requirements for approval of SEBs. While Health Canada and health agencies in other regulatory jurisdictions are aligned on many scientific principles related to biosimilar drugs, Health Canada's specific requirements may not be widely understood by many Canadian stakeholders.

Advantages of using tetrahydrofuran-water as mobile phases in the quantitation of cyclosporin A in monkey and rat plasma by liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry.

A new analytical method is described here for the quantitation of anti-inflammatory drug cyclosporin A (CyA) in monkey and rat plasma. The method used tetrahydrofuran (THF)-water mobile phases to elute the analyte and internal standard, cyclosporin C (CyC). The gradient mobile phase program successfully eluted CyA into a sharp peak and therefore improved resolution between the analyte and possible interfering materials compared with previously reported analytical approaches, where CyA was eluted as a broad peak due to the rapid conversion between different conformers.

Disease-drug interaction: Reduced response to propranolol despite increased concentration in the rat with inflammation.

Inflammatory conditions reduce clearance, hence increase plasma concentration of drugs such as propranolol that are efficiently cleared by the liver. The therapeutic consequences of this increased plasma drug concentration is mainly unknown. However, for sotalol, another beta-adrenergic antagonist, inflammation causes reduced potency.