Expert review of clinical pharmacology
-
Expert Rev Clin Pharmacol · May 2014
ReviewA perspective on the epidemiology of acetaminophen exposure and toxicity in the United States.
Acetaminophen is a commonly-used analgesic in the US and, at doses of more than 4 g/day, can lead to serious hepatotoxicity. Recent FDA and CMS decisions serve to limit and monitor exposure to high-dose acetaminophen. ⋯ Up to half of acetaminophen overdoses are unintentional, largely related to opioid-acetaminophen combinations and attempts to achieve better symptom relief. Liver injury occurs in 17% of adults with unintentional acetaminophen overdose.
-
Chagas disease is the highest impact parasitic disease in the Americas but often goes untreated due to the shortcomings of currently available therapeutics. Thus there is an urgent need for new treatment options and growing interest in drug development for the infection. This review summarizes some of the recent advances and failures in this realm, with particular emphasis on recently published studies and unpublished results presented at a recent Chagas Drug Discovery Consortium meeting.
-
Pulmonary hypertension, an elevation of the mean pulmonary artery pressure ≥25 mmHg, ultimately leads to premature death due to right ventricular dysfunction. Ten treatments from three classes of drugs are licensed for the management of pulmonary arterial hypertension. ⋯ Riociguat is a novel drug that stimulates soluble guanylate cyclase independently of nitric oxide and in synergy with nitric oxide. This review summarises the available evidence for riociguat in the treatment across all groups of pulmonary hypertension with a focus on pulmonary arterial hypertension and chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension.
-
Expert Rev Clin Pharmacol · May 2014
EditorialWhat are our pharmacotherapeutic options for MERS-CoV?
Since the initial description of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome-coronavirus (MERS-CoV), the disease has been associated with a high case-fatality rate. There is a lack of proven effective medications for therapy of MERS-CoV. The current knowledge of therapeutic options for MERS-CoV is based on the experience from SARS-CoV and from in vitro studies. In this article we review the different therapeutics available for MERS-CoV from SARS experience, in vitro and animal studies of this emerging disease.