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Biomedical subjects

R H Leach

Publications and source records attributed to R H Leach.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

An evaluation of a ward pharmacy service.

An evaluation of a ward pharmacy service showed: 1. Its introduction led to a 40-50% reduction in errors and ambiguities of prescribing. 2. It assisted in the safe and more effective use of medicines in hospitals. 3. Medical staff particularly valued the safety checking applied to their prescriptions and the patient's total medication profile, and the opportunity of seeking information about drugs. Nursing staff most appreciated the checking and clarifying elements which assisted during the administration of drugs, the promotion of the most effective use of medicines and the opportunity of discussing problems of drug therapy.

Drug Prescriptions↗

The distribution of Mycoplasma meleagridis in normal turkey carcases and those affected with air sac disease.

Mycoplasma meleagridis was isolated from both normal and diseased air sacs of turkeys examined and graded for air sacculitis on the evisceration line in a processing plant. It was also cultivated from wing bone cavities of turkeys with severe air sac lesions but not from leg bones or from samples of deep muscle. A further investigation, using material taken randomly from the condemned meat container, confirmed that M meleagridis was recoverable from wing bones.

Air Sacs↗

Returned-medicines campaign in Birmingham, 1977.

In a returned-medicines campaign lasting 3 weeks 362000 tablets and capsules were returned in 11400 containers from a population of 1.05 million. This yield was considered low. A comparison of hospital admission figures for childhood poisoning before, during, and immediately after the campaign suggests that the publicity and the destruction of unwanted medicines had little preventive value. The quantities of different medicines returned were roughly proportional to the quantities prescribed.

Adolescent↗

High nonspecific reactivity of normal lymphocytes against mycoplasma-infected target cells in cytotoxicity assays.

Several rat tumor cell cultures were deliberately infected with three species of mycoplasma commonly found as contaminants of cell lines grown in vitro, and the effect of mycoplasma infection on the results of cytotoxicity assays was examined. Lymph node cells and spleen cells from normal animals showed an apparently high spontaneous cytotoxic activity against tumor cells infected with either M. arginini or M. hyorhinis, but the reactivity against cells infected with M. orale was not significantly higher than that against uninfected cells. The high reactivity towards tumor cells infected with M. arginini and M. hyorhinis bore a close resemblence to natural cell-mediated immunity in that spleen cells were much more reactive than lymph node cells, spleen cells from nude mice were as effective as spleen cells from normal mice, and the reaction crossed both strain and species barriers. However, closer examination revealed that the cytotoxic effects were directly caused by depletion of arginine or other essential nutrients from the medium. These findings imply that a cautious approach should be taken when interpreting certain aspects of spontaneous cell-mediated cytotoxicity, and that the greatest care be taken to ensure that the cells used as targets in any cytotoxicity test are mycoplasma-free.

Animals↗

Use and wastage of prescribed medicines in the home.

A survey of prescribed medicines was carried out in 192 homes, broadly representative of households in England and Wales. The average home had 3.2 containers of such medicines; 56 per cent were in current use, 16 per cent in occasional use, and 28 per cent were never used. One fifth of all oral antibiotics found in the study were wasted. A rough estimate suggests that pound23 million of prescription products (5.6 per cent of the total) are wasted annually in England and Wales.

Drug Prescriptions↗

Atypical mycoplasmas from sheep in Great Britain and Australia identified as Mycoplasma ovipneumoniae.

Representative strains of "lacy-colony" mycoplasmas isolated from sheep in Great Britain and Victoria (Australia) were classified as M ovipneumoniae following comparison with strain Y98 of this species. The taxonomic description of M ovipneumoniae is extended and Y98 is proposed as the type strain. A brief description is given of the isolation of M ovipneumoniae from sheep in East Anglia.

Animals↗

Simple transformation method for predicting plasma drug profiles from dissolution rates.

A transformation factor is described which related in vitro drug dissolution from a preparation to the corresponding in vivo plasma drug concentrations. This factor, derived from the dissolution profile and the corresponding in vivo plasma concentration of a single formulation, was used to predict plasma concentration profiles of similar formulations simply from dissolution data.

Methods↗