The primary focus of the profession of pharmacy, the world over, has shifted from a technical, product-oriented to patient-oriented, professional service. Unfortunately, despite India excelling in all other industries, the health care industry has been very slow on the uptake of pharmacist as an integral tool in improving health services. Hence, there is need for a drastic change to make India a healthier nation, a developed nation which could only be happened when all health care professionals work hand in hand. This mainly includes providing the medicines to the public with appropriate advice and professional counseling. To achieve due recognition of pharmacist as a health care professional, pharmacy education and course curriculum at diploma/degree level should be restructured to meet the needs of present day health care. Practical training under the supervision of an experienced clinical pharmacist can help to give good exposure to the students to the real life practical problems as well as to develop confidence and good communication skills in order to solve the medication related problems in future. Thus, it is the responsibility of pharmacy educators to supply professionally and legally qualified pharmacists. For the health care chain to complete, pharmacists need to be competent and ready to embrace new challenges to develop their professional role. Creating a responsible pharmacist through education and community service will go a long way in providing health care to humanity as they offer endless opportunities for serving mankind.

The word “probiotic bacteria” which also known as good bacteria, friendly bacteria or beneficial bacteria refers to the live bacterial organisms which live and work in our digestive tracts and provide us health benefits. The substances that contain microorganism or bacteria that are beneficial to the host are known as “Probiotics”. Most of the probiotic strains belong to lactobacilli and bifidobacteria. These two have many strains and some newer strains are under research. On the other hand “prebiotics” are non-digestible food ingredients that stimulates the growth and/or activity of bacteria in the digestive system in way claimed to be beneficial to health. They are first identified and named by Marcel Roberfroid in 1995. Roberfroid offered a refined definition in the 2007 journal of nutrition stating “A prebiotic is a selectively fermented ingredient that allows specific changes, both in the composition and/or activity in the gastrointestinal micro flora that confers upon host well being and health”. “Synbiotic” refers to nutritional supplements combining probiotic and prebiotic in a form of synergism, hence synbiotic. The combinational use of probiotic and prebiotic is often described as synbiotic. Synbiotic has a great importance in the micro flora management procedure. In Japan, certain foods including probiotics and prebiotics have been approved as the Food for Specified Health Uses (FOSHU) by the Japanese government. Probiotics and probiotics individually have a great significance in human health. The proposed mechanism of action of probiotics include the improvement of disrupted intestinal micro flora in compromised hosts. They are also effective in reducing Antibiotic-associated diarrhea (AAD), blood pressure, colon cancer, lactose intolerance, Helicobacter pylori, cholesterol and many other diseases. This article provides an overview about probiotics, probiotic bacterial strains, prebiotics, their importance and how they combinationally play important role in human health.

The prolonged residence of drug formulation in the nasal cavity is of utmost importance for intranasal drug delivery. To improve the nasal retention time of Metoclopramide hydrochloride (MCP HCl), it has been formulated as in situ mucoadhesive gel by using blend of Poloxamer 407, Poloxamer 188 and carbopol 934P. The objective of this work was to improve the nasal bioavailability of antiemetic drug, MCP HCl by increasing its nasal retention time as well as by means of nasal permeation. Increase in the concentration of mucoadhesive agent enhanced the mucoadhesive force significantly. In vitro release of MCP HCl from the mucoadhesive system in simulated nasal fluid was influenced significantly by the properties and concentrations of carbopol 934P and showed enhanced bioavailability through its longer nasal residence time and ability to sustain the release of the drug. The in vitro tests performed for mucoadhesive strength and drug diffusion showed that nasal in situ gelling formulations prepared were having good mucoadhesive strength with nearly 100% drug diffusion. The formulations were evaluated for physiochemical parameter, gelation temperature, viscosity, gel strength, content uniformity mucoadhesive force, FTIR and DSC. So, this study points to the potential of mucoadhesive in situ nasal gel in terms of ease of administration, accuracy of dosing, prolonged nasal residence and improved nasal bioavailability.

A simple and sensitive method for determining baclofen in human plasma using ethanol precipitation followed by LC/MS/MS detection is described. Methyl paraben was used as internal standard. This method is more cost effective and simple compared to the existing SPE method. Chromatographic separation was achieved on a C-18 column (100 x 2.1 mm and 3.5 µm) with a gradient elution of mobile phase consisting of 10 mM ammonium formate containing 0.1% formic acid and acetonitrile. The method is linear over a range of 5.0 to 500.0 ng/ml concentration with an extraction efficiency of about 95% and is particularly suitable for pharmacokinetic studies.

In the present study, an attempt has been made to evaluate the effect of hydrophilic and hydrophobic polymers on the release profile of drug from matrix system. Salbutamol sulphate, an anti-asthmatic agent, was used as a model drug to evaluate its release characteristics from different matrices. Matrix tablets of salbutamol sulphate were prepared by direct compression process using hydrophobic polymer ethyl cellulose (F1-F4) and hydrophilic polymer HPMC (F4-F8). Release kinetics of salbutamol sulphate from these sustained release matrices in distilled water using USP paddle method with sinker for 12 h were studied. Statistically significant differences were found among the drug release profile from different formulations. The release mechanism was explored and explained with zero order, first order, Higuchi and Korsmeyer equations. The results generated in this study showed that the profile and kinetics of drug release were functions of polymer type, polymer level and physico-chemical properties of the drug. The present study concluded that the hydrophilic matrix tablets of formulation F8 prepared using HPMC showed drug release of 91.32% and can be employed as twice-a-day oral sustained release drug delivery system whereas hydrophobic matrix tablets of formulation F4 prepared using ethyl cellulose showed drug release of 64.2% and can be employed as once a day oral sustained release drug delivery system. Therefore, ethyl cellulose is suggested as an ideal polymer for production of directly compressed matrix sustained release salbutamol tablets.

The present research work discusses the development of a stability-indicating UV spectrophotometric method for the estimation of Atorvastatin calcium (ATC) and Fenofibrate (FEN) in tablet dosages form. The optimum conditions for the analysis of the drug were established. The maximum wavelength (λmax) was found to be 247 nm for ATC and 287 nm for FEN. The linearity of the proposed method was investigated in the range of 6-16 µg/ml and 2-12 µg/ml for ATC, FEN respectively. Calibration curves showed a linear relationship between the absorbance and concentration. The line equation for ATC (y = 0.041x + 0.043) with r2 of 0.999 and for Fenofibrate (y = 0.054x - 0.003) with r2 of 0.999, was obtained. Validation was performed as per ICH guidelines for linearity, accuracy, precision, LOD and LOQ. The LOD was 0.2695 µg/ml, 0.0222 µg/ml for ATC and FEN and the LOQ was 0.8780 µg/ml, 0.222 µg/ml for ATC and FEN respectively. The proposed method may be suitable for the analysis of ATC and FEN in tablet formulation for quality control purpose. The proposed methods were simple, sensitive, precise, accurate, quick and useful for routine quality control. The stability studies of ATC and FEN were conducted and the degradation characteristics were found to be much more prominent in acid hydrolysis in FEN and alkaline hydrolysis in ATC.

A simple, sensitive and validated isocratic reverse phase high performance liquid chromatographic (RP-HPLC) method has been developed for the simultaneous determination of esomeprazole and domperidone in tablet dosage form. The chromatographic separation was achieved on a hyperchrome C-18 (4.6´150 mm, 5μ particle size) analytical column using a mixture of acetonitrile: phosphate buffer (pH 5.0) in the ratio of 60:40 (v/v) used as the mobile phase, at a flow rate of 1.0 ml/min and detector wavelength at 290 nm. The validation of the proposed method was carried out for specificity, linearity, accuracy, precision, limit of detection, limit of quantitation and robustness. Linearity of method was found to be in concentration range 10-50 μg/ml for esomeprazole and 5-25 μg/ml for domperidone with correlation coefficient greater than 0.9999. The retention time of domperidone and esomeprazole was found to be 2.92 and 3.91 min respectively. The method is suitable for the estimation of both the components simultaneously in pharmaceutical tablet formulations.

Historically, medical practitioners and veterinarians selected antimicrobials to treat bacterial infectious diseases based primarily on past clinical experiences. However, with the increase in bacterial resistance to traditionally used antimicrobials, it has become more difficult for clinicians to empirically select an appropriate antimicrobial agent. As a result, in vitro antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) of the relevant bacterial pathogens, from properly collected specimens, should use validated methods. The goal of in vitro antimicrobial susceptibility testing is to provide a reliable predictor of how an organism is likely to respond to antimicrobial therapy in the infected host. This type of information aids the clinician in selecting the appropriate antimicrobial agent, aids in developing antimicrobial use policy, and provides data for epidemiological surveillance. Such epidemiological surveillance data provide a base to choose the appropriate empirical treatment (first-line therapy) and to detect the emergence and/or the dissemination of resistant bacterial strains or resistance determinants in different bacterial species.

The present study was designed to evaluate in vitro antibacterial, antifungal and cytotoxic effects of ethanolic and petroleum ether extracts of two Bangladeshi medicinal plants Dillenia indica and Abroma augusta. Aiming to investigate antibacterial and antifungal activities, disc diffusion method was followed using eleven pathogenic bacteria and six fungi as test organisms. The plant extracts (400 µg/disc) showed moderate antibacterial activities (zone of inhibition (zoi): 8-15 mm) which was compared with standard kanamycin (30 µg/disc), while extracts showed positive antifungal activities (zoi: 10-18 mm) and griseofulvin (1.0 µg/disk) was used as standard antifungal agent. During evaluation of in vitro cytotoxicity effects of the plant extracts, brine shrimp lethality bioassay was performed observing mortality rate of brine shrimp nauplii (Artemia salina) and the LC50 value observed by probity analysis as 574.926, 334.284, 380.875 and 307.459 for DIET, DIPE, AAET and AAPE respectively. Current studies indicated that both plant extracts possessed moderate antimicrobial activities and good cytotoxic properties.

Stratum corneum is the outermost layer of the skin and is the biggest barrier for the permeation of drugs. By applying external energy stratum corneum (SC) can be ablated such that it enhances molecular transport. Creating micro channels using laser power is one of the latest and most promising development. Irradiating skin with laser of particular frequency results in excitation of specific molecules (most often water molecules) in the skin. The super heating of water reciprocates in micropore formation. The technique is relatively new, but holds promises for future. This review provides an overview of laser poration and its application in transdermal drug delivery.