Shahnaz Usman

The aim of the study was to evaluate the effect of different lubricants on pharmaceutical effectiveness of metronidazole tablets determined by the rate of release of drug from the dosage form. Different lubricants, like magnesium stearate, talc and the combination of both were used to prepare metronidazole tablets by direct compression method. The tablets were tested for quality control parameters such as uniformity of weight, thickness, diameter, contents assay, hardness, friability and disintegration time. Formulations were tested for the releasing pattern of drug from tablets by in-vitro dissolution test. Better results were achieved from formulation having magnesium stearate as lubricant based on compression force value. The content uniformity for all the three formulations was found in the range of 96.71 to 99.61%, while hardness was in the range of 7.39±0.341 to 10.375±0.95 Kg. The formulated tablets were also analyzed for dissolution profile which was more than 85% within 20 minutes. Then it was compared with dissolution profile of marketed products for quality and similarity analysis. Lubricant plays a key role in successful manufacturing of pharmaceutical solid dosage forms. Many failures in pharmaceutical manufacturing operations, directly or indirectly, can be controlled by appropriate screening of lubricants.

The present study aims to find the incidence of smoking among the youth of Ras Al Khaimah (UAE). It is assumed that adolescence and young adulthood are the most susceptible stages to start tobacco use. This study mainly focuses on analyzing the age patterns in which the youth is mostly inclined towards smoking, finding the major causes and factors that influence this inclination, and creating awareness about the harmful effects of smoking on their health. A structured questionnaire consisting of 15 questions was administered among 116 randomly selected participants. The main parameters of the study were prevalence of smoking, age, category of responder, number of cigarette /day, reason, whether they tried to stop smoking, methods used to stop smoking, awareness about passive killer and whether they got any advice from parents/guardians regarding smoking etc. The results shows that many sociodemographic, environmental, behavioral and personal factors are responsible for smoking. More than 88.37% of young adults get this habit at the age below 18 years either directly or indirectly and family/friends play a significant role in this habit. Only an insignificant 9% benefitted from the awareness programs. This emphasizes the importance of creating more awareness programs for the youth. The study comes to the conclusion that more longitudinal and cohort analyses with a large number of volunteers is necessary to examine these trends more closely. The findings demonstrate considerable heterogeneity in smoking among young adults. So it is the time to warrant immediate attention from the public health community.