Medicine
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Comparative Study Observational Study
Comparison of UHPLC and HPLC in benzodiazepines analysis of postmortem samples: a case-control study.
The aim of this study was to compare system efficiency and analysis duration regarding the solvent consumption and system maintenance in high-pressure liquid chromatography (HPLC) and ultra high-pressure liquid chromatography (UHPLC). In a case-control study, standard solutions of 7 benzodiazepines (BZs) and 73 biological samples such as urine, tissue, stomach content, and bile that screened positive for BZs were analyzed by HPLC and UHPLC in laboratory of forensic toxicology during 2012 to 2013. HPLC analysis was performed using a Knauer by 100-5 C-18 column (250 mm × 4.6 mm) and Knauer photodiode array detector (PAD). ⋯ In UHPLC, small particle size and short length of column cause effective separation of BZs in a very short time. Reduced flow rate, solvent consumption, and injection volume cause more efficiency and less analysis costs. Thus, in the detection of BZs, UHPLC is an accurate, sensitive, and fast method with less cost of analysis.
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Observational Study
The risk of erectile dysfunction in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease: a population-based cohort study in Taiwan.
The prevalence of erectile dysfunction (ED) in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) seemed high; however, large scale of population-based study was absent. We conducted a retrospective cohort study using data from the National Health Insurance system of Taiwan. The cohort included 29,042 male patients who were newly diagnosed with COPD. ⋯ Compared with non-COPD patients, the hazard ratio increased with the number of emergency room visits and admissions for COPD from 1.51 (95% CI 1.29-1.77) to 5.46 (95% CI 3.03-9.84) and from 1.50 (95% CI 1.28-1.76) to 11.5 (95% CI 5.83-22.6), respectively. Patients with COPD are at a significantly higher risk of developing ED compared with the general population regardless of age and presence of comorbidity. The results also support that poor control of COPD status is a key factor affecting ED development.