Pradeep Kumar T

Steroids are widely prescribed and used by practitioners due to powerful anti-inflammatory and immunosuppressive actions. So, care should be exercised in the rational selection of steroids1. Hence this study was aimed to evaluate the utilization of corticosteroids with the secondary objective to assess co-prescription with corticosteroids, the nature and severity of adverse drug reactions and drug-drug interactions, with an intention to prevent the inappropriate use of corticosteroids. A prospective observational study was carried out in 215 In-patient from various departments of the hospital during 6 months period and subjected to statistical analysis. Out of 215 In-patients, 145 were male and 70 were female, in which most of the patients (22.7%) belongs to age group of 51-60 years. The major complaints were respiratory tract disorders (about 48%) and most of the patients (82%) were prescribed single corticosteroids as monotherapy (42.3%, budesonide) in same or different dosage forms. The commonly used route of administration was inhalation (48%) and is co-prescribed with antibiotics (19.5%). The average number of drugs prescribed was 7.16 drugs per prescription. The mean duration of corticosteroids use was 3.20 ± 1.98 days. The incidence of drug interactions observed were higher (78.6%), with most of them were moderate interactions. The ADR observed with study population were few and minor. The study concluded that, the prescription of corticosteroids is found to be rational except for drug interactions and dosage regimen. Hence the involvement of clinical pharmacists in clinical practice helps to increase proper usage of corticosteroids and optimum outcome.

A simple, accurate, economical and reproducible reverse phase high performance liquid chromatographic (RP-HPLC) method was developed and validated for the determination of Cetirizine hydrochloride and Ambroxol hydrochloride in bulk and pharmaceutical formulations. The separation was achieved on a phenomenex C18 column (150 × 4.6 mm i.d, particle size of 5µ) using a mixture of methanol, acetonitrile and water in the ratio of (30:30:40v/v )as mobile phase in an isocratic elution mode, at a flow rate of 1  ml/min. The detection was monitored at 230 nm. The retention time of Cetirizine hydrochloride and Ambroxol hydrochloride was found to be around 2.27 ± 0.12 min and 4.70 ± 0.14 min respectively. Excellent linearity range was found between 1-10 µg/ml for cetirizine hydrochloride and 10-100 µg/ml for Ambroxol hydrochloride. The method was validated with respect to linearity, robustness, precision and accuracy and was successfully applied for the simultaneous determination of Cetirizine hydrochloride and Ambroxol hydrochloride from the combined dosage formulation. Key words: Cetirizine hydrochloride; Ambroxol hydrochloride; RP-HPLC method.