Chinedum Babalola

There are a lot of opportunities for women; the world is focusing on women. So, by now, I do not expect any woman or young girl to complain of not being given an opportunity because there are a lot of opportunities out there for all young girls and women in the world as we speak; all we need to do is to find opportunities and grab them.

Some drugs are expected to be taken after food, some are to be taken on an empty stomach. For drugs that should be taken in an empty stomach, studies have shown that when taken with food, there is an interaction which may reduce their effectiveness. Rather such drugs can be taken about 30 minutes before food.

Practice of combining antibiotic with anti-malarials is very common in Nigeria, are there possibilities of such a practice affecting the effectiveness of these drugs? From studies carried out many common antimalarials reduce the effectiveness of common antibiotics, thus promoting resistance in disease-causing germs to these antibiotics.

Also, the rate at which the body is able to breakdown a drug could be genetic modified. So, it is possible based on a person’s genetic makeup to predict those that may react to some drugs. This makes some people’s reaction to particular drugs genetically.

They should be able to clack the patient like a doctor to know medicines taken, how they are feeling, any need to change their medicine or dosage regime and so on. This is about individualised medicine. Nobody should die of drug reaction, if things work as they should. Handling over medicines, a pharmacy technician can do that. But information the patient needs about the drug should be provided by the pharmacist.

One thing that is important to note is that drugs are poisons; there is no drug that really does not have its side effect. That is why the drug regulatory body based on pharmacovigilant sometimes recall some drugs from the market if high levels of adverse drug reactions are reported.

When individuals take a drug, the body’s ability to break this down fast is dependent on the availability of the enzyme that does this in the body. In some people, it is fast while in others it is either mild or moderate.

The second study was on hypersensitivity of sulpha drugs in healthy people and people living with HIV. About 15 per cent from our survey reported various types of reaction to sulpha drugs. However, a breakdown of the data showed that hypersensitivity of sulpha drugs in people living with HIV was far higher.

Work on quinine suppository has been on for so many years. Preliminary studies on the quinine suppository in rabbits indicated that it had antimalarial properties. However, the bioavailability is low. At the moment, one of our investigators is currently working in the USA on increasing its bioavailability to get an optimum product that will release the necessary level that they need. This will then be followed by more clinical trials.