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Co-occurring Disorders Among the Older Adult Population
Published in Tricia L. Chandler, Fredrick Dombrowski, Tara G. Matthews, Co-occurring Mental Illness and Substance Use Disorders, 2022
Karlene Barrett, Tricia L. Chandler
Biological factors of aging can create multiple issues for older adults to manage. As people age, they may experience reduced mobility, chronic pain, cardiovascular disease complications, diabetes, chronic immune system impairment, cancer, and a variety of other health conditions for which they are taking some form of medication to manage the symptoms, indicating the potential need for long-term care to treat the elderly to manage the overuse of prescription drugs in the United States (Bogunovic, 2012). Chronic pain and higher levels of pain intensity have been correlated with elevated depression symptoms, which contribute to the use of opiates and benzodiazepine medications to manage pain symptoms, which in some cases increase the risk of dementia (Brooks et al., 2019; Tampi & Bennet, 2021). These pain substances, along with other psychotropic medications prescribed for anxiety and depression, can lead to reduction in an older adult’s quality of life due to increases in drowsiness, weakness, and confusion; problems with coordination; and injuries due to falls (Tournier et al., 2019).
Introduction to Vaccination
Published in Mesut Karahan, Synthetic Peptide Vaccine Models, 2021
Nezih Pişkinpaşa, Ömer Faruk Karasakal
Immunity is the entire system consisting of specialized cells and tissues that protect the organism from all foreign matter and biological factors that it is exposed to from outside. The distinction between healthy and foreign substances is based on a complex system. There are basically two types of immunity in humans. They are innate immunity and acquired immunity. Natural immunity depends on inheritance, the active immunity that occurs after exposure to the antigens. Passive immunity is the transfer of protective antibodies formed by another human or animal to another human by injection. The immune system creates both passive and active immunity against antigens (Delany, Rappuoli, and De Gregorio 2013).
Genomic and biological risk profiling
Published in Ulrik Kihlbom, Mats G. Hansson, Silke Schicktanz, Ethical, Social and Psychological Impacts of Genomic Risk Communication, 2020
Mats G. Hansson, Karim Raza, Marie Falahee
However, as Verweij also has pointed out, there are indeed positive effects of an increased focus on medical and biological factors affecting health. Infant mortality has undoubtedly decreased due to an increased focus on preventive factors related to the medicalization of pregnancy and birth. Lung cancer has dropped significantly due to campaigns against smoking and cardiovascular diseases are better controlled by use of statins as a preventive intervention. For cardiovascular diseases it has been shown that 90 per cent of the total risk is related to modifiable factors, e.g. smoking, physical exercise, psychosocial stress (Yusuf et al., 2004). Furthermore, as argued by Jonathan Scholl: ‘Medicalization can even involve increasing one’s feeling of self-control, such as with birth control and medicalized pregnancies’ (Scholl, 2017).
The Controversy of Chronotherapy: Emerging Evidence regarding Bedtime Dosing of Antihypertensive Medications in Non-Arteritic Anterior Ischemic Optic Neuropathy
Published in Seminars in Ophthalmology, 2023
Mary T. Labowsky, Joseph F. Rizzo
But, several biological factors, which vary over the course of a day, can influence the pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamic of drugs including: gastrointestinal (GI) tract factors (which vary with cyclic pattern of meals and fasting during sleep) like GI motility, perfusion, and pH; hepatobiliary and pancreatic processes; cell transport mechanisms; plasma and tissue protein composition; renal perfusion and function, among others. These factors influence the amount of free and active medication circulating in the blood. Another person-specific factor is the number and conformation of cell and tissue receptors to which a drug will bind.6 Thus, there is a complex and yet poorly understood matrix of dynamics that can influence how timing of medication ingestion may influence its efficacy in a particular individual, leading to increased research interest in chronotherapy.
Potential application of mass spectrometry imaging in pharmacokinetic studies
Published in Xenobiotica, 2022
Chukwunonso K. Nwabufo, Omozojie P. Aigbogun
The successful development and commercialisation of investigational new drugs (INDs) and/or repurposed drugs are based on their demonstrated ability to offer clinical therapeutic benefits for specific disease conditions that outweigh any observable safety concerns. However, many drug development programs have failed due to safety and efficacy issues. According to one study, 54% of 640 INDs failed clinical development, owing to insufficient efficacy (57%) and safety concerns (17%) (Hwang et al. 2016). Evidently, several drug repurposing programs for the treatment of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection have failed due to safety and efficacy issues. For example, lopinavir – a pre-existing antiretroviral drug that was being repurposed for the treatment of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) may have failed partly due to insufficient pulmonary therapeutic concentration required to overcome the high viral load in the lung which is the predominate site of SARS-CoV-2 infection (Wang and Chen 2020). These drug development failures have a huge associated cost and also deprive lifesaving medicines to the affected patient population (Nwabufo 2021). Therefore, it is important to identify several intrinsic biological factors that may affect the safety and efficacy profile of drugs at the early stage of drug development before proceeding to the costly clinical development stage.
Efficacy of nivolumab as second line treatment for recurrent or metastatic head and neck squamous cell carcinoma: a national DAHANCA cohort study
Published in Acta Oncologica, 2022
Sebastian Søby, Anita Gothelf, Niels Gyldenkerne, Jens Bentzen, Kinga Nowicka-Matus, Trine Tramm, Jesper Grau Eriksen
Treatment with PD-1 inhibitors is a new and promising palliative treatment for rmHNSCC often with lower morbidity than classical chemotherapy [4,5]. Common side effects related to PD-1 inhibition include fatigue, nausea, rash, decreased appetite, and pruritus [4]. However, the available studies investigating the efficacy of PD-1 inhibitors have only included a highly selected group of relatively young patients in good general condition, and these do not necessarily reflect the typical real-life patient. Such patients are often older, present with substantial comorbidity, as well as impaired WHO performance status [6]. Furthermore, the difference in treatment response appears to differ greatly between patients [4]. For this reason, identification of clinical, as well as biological, factors affecting the individual response to the treatment would be valuable for patient selection.