Therapeutic class information

The pharmacists of Care-Rite Pharmacy also developed patient educational tools to be used during the patient assessment and patient education components of the Pharmacy Check-up Service. Because many of the targeted patients have similar medical conditions, education materials were developed for specific disease states, including hypertension, ischemic heart disease, diabetes, asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), etc. Also, educational materials were developed for certain therapeutic classes of medications. The Care-Rite pharmacists also determined that many patients needed individualized education materials, so they implemented a drug information/educational service as part of the MTM service. With this service, patients can ask questions regarding their medical conditions and/or drug therapies. The pharmacists will research and provide an individualized written response for each patient. 

Many of the physicochemical properties of interest are dependent on the solid form and, unfortunately, successful prediction of polymorphic forms is inexact. This, in combination with the fact that prediction of physicochemical properties is also very challenging, makes ah initio prediction very difficult and imprecise. However, some discussion of predictive tools is included in this chapter. A general comment regarding ah initio prediction is that "order of magnitude" predictions may be possible once some basic physicochemical information is available. However, the complexity and diversity of the chemistry space make reliable predictions across a broad spectrum of chemical structures very difficult. It is not surprising then that physicochemical predictions across more narrowly defined chemical spaces (e.g., chemical or therapeutic classes) can be more reliable and useful. Drug delivery, formulation, and computational chemistry experts will likely be able to provide a useful perspective on opportunities to take advantage of such ah initio predictions within the chemistry space that discovery teams often operate. 

Commonly requested therapeutic class and product information (update February 2006). Available at 7 IMS Health.com. Accessed July 11, 2006. 

Cytokines and biological response modifiers represent a broad class of therapeutic agents that modify the hosts response to cancer or cancer therapies. The enormous body information about their clinical uses and their side effects is beyond the scope of this essay that can only give illustrative examples. For an up-to-date information the reader can resort to reference [5]. As many as 33 different interleukins are known and the list continues to grow IL-2 used in the treatment of kidney cancer is one example. Interferon alpha is used for chronic myelogenous leukeia, hairy cell leukaemia and Kaposi s sarcoma. Interferons are also used in the treatment of chronic infections such as viral hepatitis. Tumor necrosis factor (alpha), G/GM/M-CSF, and several other cellular factors are used in treatment of various cancers. Many of these cytokines produce serious side effects that limit their use. 

Among the compound details collected are the following drug indication, therapeutic area, market status including country and approval status, trade names, routes of administration and chemical class. For most of these data types, there is information on more than 1200 drugs. 

The commonly used classes of antidepressants are discussed in the following sections, and information about doses and half-lives is summarized in Table 2-1. The antidepressant classes are based on similarity of receptor effects and side effects. All are effective against depression when administered in therapeutic doses. The choice of antidepressant medication is based on the patient s psychiatric symptoms, his or her history of treatment response, family members history of response, medication side-effect profiles, and comorbid disorders (Tables 2-2 and 2-3). In general, SSRIs and the other newer antidepressants are better tolerated and safer than TCAs and MAOIs, although many patients benefit from treatment with these older drugs. In the following sections, clinically relevant information is presented for the antidepressant medication classes individually, and the pharmacological treatment of depression is also discussed. The use of antidepressants to treat anxiety disorders is addressed in Chapter 3. 

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