INTRODUCTION: Resistant hypertension is blood pressure (BP) that remains above target despite treatment with maximum doses of three antihypertensive drugs, which may include a diuretic. The prevalence of resistant hypertension is unknown, and there are no local studies in the Philippines concerning this condition. METHODS: A retrospective descriptive cohort study was conducted in the Hypertension Clinic of the Section of Hypertension of the Philippine General Hospital. A total of 51 patients were diagnosed with resistant hypertension, and charts were reviewed and analyzed. RESULTS: Majority of the patients were female (31 [60.8%]), with a mean age of 56.3 years. All of them presented with symptoms; the most common presenting symptoms were headache, exertional dyspnea, nape pain, dizziness, and easy fatigability. Of the 51 patients, 45% also had diabetes mellitus, 11.8% had dyslipidemia, and 7.8% had a previous history of preeclampsia. Approximately 35% of these patients were smokers. The average BP before referral to the section was 167/94 mm Hg. By this time, most patients will either be on a four-drug regimen (42.1%) or a three-drug regimen (36.8%). The median number of visits in the Hypertension Clinic before control of BP was three follow-ups, with the average BP being 119/71 mm Hg. The regimens of the patients with controlled BP are three-drug combination (36.4%), four-drug combination (36.4%), and five-drug combination (27.3%). CONCLUSION Early referral to a hypertension specialist may benefit a patient with resistant hypertension, decreasing the number of follow-up visits to control a patient’s BP. Patients with resistant hypertension may require four- to five-drug regimens, which may be needed to adequately control a patient’s BP.
Drug Combinations ; Hypertension

Drug combination is a common clinical phenomenon. However, the scientific implementation of drug combination is li-mited by the weak rational evaluation that reflects its clinical characteristics. In order to break through the limitations of existing evaluation tools, examining drug-to-drug and drug-to-target action characteristics is proposed from the physical, chemical and biological perspectives, combining clinical multicenter case resources, domestic and international drug interaction public facilities with the aim of discovering the common rules of drug combination. Machine learning technology is employed to build a system for evaluating and predicting the rationality of clinical drug combinations based on "drug characteristics-repository information-artificial intelligence" strategy, which will be debugged and validated in multi-center clinical practice, with a view to providing new ideas and technical references for the safety and efficacy of clinical drug use.
Artificial Intelligence ; Drug Combinations ; Machine Learning ; Technology

Anesthesiologists have been aware of the importance of optimal drug combination long ago and performed many investigations about the combined use of anesthetic agents. There are 3 classes of drug interaction: additive, synergistic, and antagonistic. These definitions of drug interaction suggest that a zero interaction model should exist to be used as a reference in classifying the interaction of drug combinations. The Loewe additivity has been used as a universal reference model for classifying drug interaction. Most anesthetic drugs follow the sigmoid E(max) model (Hill equation); this model will be used for modeling response surface. Among lots of models for drug interaction in the anesthetic area, the Greco model, Machado model, Plummer model, Carter model, Minto model, Fidler model, and Kong model are adequate to be applied to the data of anesthetic drug interaction. A model with a single interaction parameter does not accept an inconsistency in the classes of drug interactions. To solve this problem, some researchers proposed parametric models which have a polynomial interaction function to capture synergy, additivity, and antagonism scattered all over the surface of drug combinations. Inference about truth must be based on an optimal approximating model. Akaike information criterion (AIC) is the most popular approach to choosing the best model among the aforementioned models. Whatever the good qualities of a chosen model, it is uncertain whether the chosen model is the best model. A more robust inference can be extracted from averaging several models that are considered relevant.
Anesthetics ; Collodion ; Colon, Sigmoid ; Drug Combinations ; Drug Interactions

Acupuncture Analgesia ; trends ; China ; Drug Combinations ; Drug Synergism

Bortezomib ; therapeutic use ; Drug Combinations ; Humans ; Multiple Myeloma ; drug therapy

As a dangerous disease with rapid progression, endotoxemia is easy to induce the damage to multiple organs. However, its specific and efficient treatment methods are still lacking at present. Both Qingkailing Injection(QKLI) and Shengmai Injection(SMI) have been proved effective in anti-inflammation, anti-endotoxin and organ protection. In this study, carrageenan and endotoxin were injected successively into rats to establish an endotoxemia model. Different doses of QKLI and SMI were administered to the endotoxemia rats by intraperitoneal injection separately or in combination. Then the count of white blood cells, the number of platelets, the content of cytokines, biochemical indexes, organ coefficient and pathological changes of main organs in the rats were detected. The results showed that the rats in the model group had obvious symptoms of endotoxemia, i.e., leucopenia, thrombocytopenia, increase in cytokines(IL-6 and TNF-α) and biochemical indexes of liver and kidney function as well as pathological damage to liver, kidney and lung. QKLI alone can alleviate the above symptoms of endotoxemia and the organ injury. SMI alone is less effective in improving disseminated intravascular coagulation(DIC) and cytokine secretion complicated with endotoxemia, but capable of reducing the inflammation degree of the lung, liver and kidney. The combination of QKLI and SMI remarkably increased the number of platelets in the peripheral blood, improved the liver and kidney function and reduced inflammatory factors, with lung, liver, kidney and other organ structures protected well. Moreover, the improvement effect of the combination of QKLI and SMI was stronger than those of the two injections alone at fixed doses, indicative of a synergistic effect.
Animals ; Drug Combinations ; Drugs, Chinese Herbal ; Endotoxemia/drug therapy* ; Rats

In this paper, Acousto-Optical tomography is modeled by a linear integral equation and an inverse problem involving a diffusion equation in n-spatial dimensions. We make two-step mathematical model. First, we solve a linear integral equation. Assuming the optical energy fluence rate has been recovered from the previous equation, the absorption coefficient micro is then reconstructed by solving an inverse problem. Numerical experiments are presented for the case n=2. The traditional gradient descent method is used for the numerical simulations. The result of the gradient descent method produces the blurring effect. To get rid of the blurring effect, we suggest the total variation regularization for the minimization problem.
Absorption ; Diffusion ; Drug Combinations ; Models, Theoretical ; Piperonyl Butoxide ; Pyrethrins

The formulae decoctions are commonly used in clinic and have characteristics of simple preparation and rapid effect. It was considered as a complex physical and chemical system. In this article, the physical and chemical properties and chemical components and their relationships were investigated to explore the changes of characteristics resulted from different combinations of drugs of Shaofu Zhuyu decoction. The method of partial leasts-quares regression was adopted to evaluate the correlation between physical and chemical parameters and chemical components. These researches may provide a new way to investigate the state of bioactive components, the action mechanisms, and property of treating diseases of traditional Chinese medicine decoction.
Chemistry, Pharmaceutical ; Drug Combinations ; Drugs, Chinese Herbal ; chemistry

Prospective clinical trial on two groups of patients: one treated with amitryptyline and the other with diantalvic. Results: At the beginning of study, no difference in the severity of pain in both groups. Group 1 had more effective to control pain than group 2. After one week of treatment, group 1 had one case (3.3%) while group 2 had 15 cases (35.7%) didn’t have any improvement. Amitriptyline had more advantages that Diantalvic to treat the postzosterian pain
Pain ; Amitriptyline ; Drug Combinations ; Herpes Zoster ; Therapeutics ; drugs

Bortezomib ; Dexamethasone ; Drug Combinations ; Humans ; Multiple Myeloma ; Rhabdomyolysis