Medication | EPFL Graph Search

A medication (also called medicament, medicine, pharmaceutical drug, medicinal drug or simply drug) is a drug used to diagnose, cure, treat, or prevent disease. Drug therapy (pharmacotherapy) is an important part of the medical field and relies on the science of pharmacology for continual advancement and on pharmacy for appropriate management. Drugs are classified in many ways. One of the key divisions is by level of control, which distinguishes prescription drugs (those that a pharmacist dispenses only on the order of a physician, physician assistant, or qualified nurse) from over-the-counter drugs (those that consumers can order for themselves). Another key distinction is between traditional small molecule drugs, usually derived from chemical synthesis, and biopharmaceuticals, which include recombinant proteins, vaccines, blood products used therapeutically (such as IVIG), gene therapy, monoclonal antibodies and cell therapy (for instance, stem cell therapies). Other ways to class

A Multiscale, Systems-Level, Neuropharmacological Model of Cortico-Basal Ganglia System for Arm Reaching Under Normal, Parkinsonian, and Levodopa Medication Conditions

Vignayanandam Ravindernath Muddapu

In order to understand the link between substantia nigra pars compacta (SNc) cell loss and Parkinson's disease (PD) symptoms, we developed a multiscale computational model that can replicate the symptoms at the behavioural level by incorporating the key cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying PD pathology. There is a modelling tradition that links dopamine to reward and uses reinforcement learning (RL) concepts to model the basal ganglia. In our model, we replace the abstract representations of reward with the realistic variable of extracellular DA released by a network of SNc cells and incorporate it in the RL-based behavioural model, which simulates the arm reaching task. Our results successfully replicated the impact of SNc cell loss and levodopa (L-DOPA) medication on reaching performance. It also shows the side effects of medication, such as wearing off and peak dosage dyskinesias. The model demonstrates how differential dopaminergic axonal degeneration in basal ganglia results in various cardinal symptoms of PD. It was able to predict the optimum L-DOPA medication dosage for varying degrees of cell loss. The proposed model has a potential clinical application where drug dosage can be optimised as per patient characteristics.

FRONTIERS MEDIA SA2022

The Effect of Valsartan versus Non-RAAS Treatment on Autoregulation of Cerebral Blood Flow

Jean-Marc Vesin

Background: Cerebral autoregulation (CA) is a protective mechanism which maintains the steadiness of the cerebral blood flow (CBF) through a broad range of systemic blood pressure (BP). Acute hypertension has been shown to reduce the cerebrovascular adaptation to BP variations. However, it is still unknown whether CA is impaired in chronic hypertension. This study evaluated whether a strict control of BP affects the CA in patients with chronic hypertension, and compared a valsartan-based regimen to a regimen not inhibiting the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system (non-RAAS). Methods: Eighty untreated patients with isolated systolic hypertension were randomized to valsartan 320 mg or to a non-RAAS regimen during 6 months. The medication was upgraded to obtain BP

Karger2012

Study of loading and delivery of drugs from various hydrogel matrices for orthopaedic applications

Tamsine Wills

Nowadays, there are still several unmet medical needs in the field of orthopaedic and trauma surgery leading to the incentive of finding alternative and innovative clinical therapeutics for the treatment of bone regeneration. For example, the entrapment of osteoinductive growth factors in a polymeric matrix with subsequent gradual release and local delivery to the site of trauma. This new technology inspired the activities relating to my project in which I investigated the potential use of synthetic hydrogels for the sustained in situ release of bioactives. The tasks relating to my project were divided into two main experiments; release assays and bioactivity assays. During the release assays, the in vitro release of three osteoinductive growth factors from five different synthetic hydrogels was investigated. The goal was to characterise the release of the protein drugs from the different polymers, selected on the basis of their swelling and degradation behaviour. The quantification of the released bioactives was assessed by performing an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), for which different parameters were optimised. As a result, release profiles of the different protein drugs from the different hydrogel formulations were obtained. Then, it was investigated if the growth factors were still biologically active or if incubation in synthetic matrices influenced their properties. This was assessed by performing bioassays during which the alkaline phosphatase (ALP) activity of a mouse myoblast cell line (C2C12 cells) was evaluated. Indeed, ALP is a marker of osteoblastic activity which indicates increased levels of osteogenesis, implying biological activity of the tested osteoinductive bioactives. These results gave a good representation of the effect of the synthetic hydrogels and their incubation in release buffer on the bioactivity of the incorporated protein drugs

2009

Study of loading and delivery of drugs from various hydrogel matrices for orthopaedic applications

Tamsine Wills

2009