New Legislation Aimed at the Military

By fioricetultram


In a perfect world, laws would not be necessary. But, when people are not prepared to do the “right” thing, the legislature has to step in to force compliance. If you were to ask which class of people in the US right now should be the most honored and protected, most would answer the soldiers, airmen and sailors who serve the US with pride and distinction. Unfortunately, the US Government seems not to want to do the “right” thing. There have been serious problems uncovered in the treatment facilities provided for returning service personnel and veterans. Now we have two new bills signed into law by President Bush to address some of the outstanding issues. The Military Pain Care Act of 2008 is intended to force the military to implement more effective pain care management for all serving personnel. Everyone who serves their country is entitled to the best of care. Yet there is clear evidence that prescription painkillers like tramadol hcl and the more powerful narcotic analgesics are being abused. Since the Iraq war began, the number of prescriptions for painkillers has risen from 30,000 to 50,000 per month suggesting that military doctors are too casual in prescribing potentially addictive drugs. With the new legislation in place, the Department of Defense will have to review current policies and make relevant changes. There are two other bills: the Veterans Pain Care Act (now signed into law) and the National Pain Care Policy Act (stalled in Senate). There is a real challenge to the US healthcare system to react positively to the wave of injured personnel returning from the current conflicts. This represents a major financial burden not only in the cost of the treatment, but also in lost production estimated at $100 billion every year when veterans are unable to work because of their chronic pain. Capitol Hill no longer thinks it is sufficient for physicians to hand out tramadol hcl and the more powerful narcotic painkillers, and leave it at that. There is a pressing need to formulate a comprehensive approach to reintegrate injured military personnel into society and to help them cope with the pain. As it is, the effects of chronic pain lead to job losses and undermine family relationships. Ignoring post traumatic stress disorder, there are also major problems with anxiety and depression when the pain is not relieved leaving the personnel alienated and alone.



Buy Tramadol

categoriaHealth commentoNo Comments dataFebruary 3rd, 2010
Read All

Jesse Connone, Co-Founder of the Back Pain Institute Shares Why Back Pain Occurs

By fioricetultram


This interview is an excerpt from Kevin Gianni’s Fountain of Youth Summit, which can be found at http://fountainofyouthworldsummit.com. In this excerpt, Jesse Connone the biggest mistake people with back pain make.

The Fountain of Youth World Summit with Jesse Connone, personal trainer and co-founder of the Healthy Back Institute.

Kevin: Lets start with you know how you started the healthy back pain institute? Let’s talk about what you had to go through and why you are here today?

Jesse: Sure. I have spent 7 or 8 years working as a personal trainer as you know and been working as a personal trainer, working with clients one on one. Over the years I had noticed there is this reoccurring theme. So many of the people that I work with had injuries that we had to work around and the most common one was back pain, various forms of back and neck pain. And so you know in the 7 or 8 years that I did personal training I got very experienced working with people with these types of conditions like back pain and almost all of the time my clients got better relief from my fitness training than they did their treatments with their doctor.

Kevin: O.k.

Jesse: And so like I said I got really good at helping people identify you know the root cause of what was going on you know why was their body giving them trouble? Why was their pain? And so on. Finally it just kind of clicked and like oh this is it, this is what I really enjoy doing the most. This is what I am the best at and so I along with a friend created again what is called the healthy back institute and you can find us online at losethebackpain.com and as you mentioned our number one focus and mission is to help people with various forms of back pain. And so we have everything from you know highly active discussion forum on our website where people can communicate, ask questions. We have all kinds of people from all over the world helping each other; you know sharing their experiences and so on. We have articles, books, videos, audios. We even just recently started offering a one on one treatment package.

Kevin: Oh, Very cool!

Jesse: Yes so basically you know the focus is to help people you know with back pain because so many people that have back pain, sciatica, neck pain so on, the treatment that they or the treatments that they are getting usually don’t work or if they do work it’s usually temporary. And we can talk about you know why that is in a moment but the fact is most people who have back pain have it for years and years and years. And actually I can share with you an interesting statistic.

Kevin: Sure

Jesse: We did this survey recently of our customers and that’s over 40,000 customers and in the survey we found that 65% of the people who responded to the survey had had back pain for more than a year.

Kevin: Wow

Jesse: and when you break it down you know we had under a year, for one to two years, 2 to 4 years, 4 to 6, 6 to 10. There was actually over 25% of these people who had back pain over 10 years. So it’s like a massive problem. And for most people it’s a reoccurring problem. It’s not something that you get it once and it goes away forever. It typically comes back and we will talk about why it comes back to later on in this call but it just goes to show you and as any person with back pain will probably agree the treatments that are available typically just don’t work like I said they don’t deliver lasting relief. They may deliver the temporary relief, the pain may go away for a couple of weeks or a couple of months even but its going to come back and usually it comes back worse than it did before.

Kevin: Right! What are some of the mistakes that people make with back pain? What are some of the things that they assume is going to happen? Why don’t we get into I know you have the list of mistakes that you have identified as things that happened to the general population who are in pain. What are some of those?

Jesse: Sure There are 7 key mistakes that we have identified you know again in working with 40,000 people one of the things that really has helped us is we just don’t sell products you know to help people. We actually work with people personally so if you buy a product from us you may do the program on your own but you actually talk to us on the phone personally.

Kevin: Oh wow that’s great . You have an intimate knowledge of what they have been doing.

Jesse: Right yeah, very much though. I see all kinds of people. I get their pictures of them standing in their underwear. So we can analyze their posture. And their muscle balances.

Kevin: Sure!

Jesse: And so we call basically personal support and so we work really closely with all these people. One of the things that I found was a set of 7 key mistakes that people make. We are not going to make a call through all of them in detail but I will go through some of the bigger ones that I think present a larger problem for people. And the first one is not dealing with the problem the first time, like I mentioned a few moments ago.

Most people, who have back pain, have it for longer period of time. And it comes and goes. And one of the reason that is the case because what happens is, you know somebody wakes up one morning and boom their back soar. Or they are outside shelving snow. And all of sudden they say, my back went out. I threw my back out. Or I picked up a box, whatever the case maybe, all of sudden they have this case of back pain. Typically what most people do is they rest a little bit. They might take up over the counter pain killers Tylenol, Advil things like that whatever. If it is bad enough, they will go their doctors. They’ll get a prescription strength drug and usually within a couple of days or at most couple of weeks. Most initial cases of back pain will go away.

If you do this minor things to kind of adjust the symptoms like take rest and take medications. The problem is something that caused their back pain flair up to happen. And unless you take the time right then and there to figure out why, what’s going on with your body. Why did this happen to me. Unless you take the time to do that then which 99% of people don’t again they let the pain go away on its own, it going to come back later. And again like I said earlier again it’s almost over it will come back again worst than the first case. Most people like usually two to four months for the pain comes back. So that mistake is usually again, not dealing with it you know the first case. Through the first incident and again like dealing with it what I mean by it is specifically finding out the exact cause of pain. And not just the cause as in offense of the condition somebody might have back pain and go to a doctor and diagnosed with a herniated disc. And so they think the cause of the pain is the herniated disc.

Kevin: O.k.

Jesse: That’s the condition. But you have to go deeper than that, you have to go and say, and this hernia disk is causing the pain. Why do I have the hernia or disk? It doesn’t happen for no reason. You know there is a reason and there is a cause there. And unlike most people are let to believe. Primarily by misinformation put up by doctors or just lack of information put up by doctors. You know the herniated disc, this just doesn’t happen just out of the blue. Like most people are again let to believe. It’s something that is building up over the time. It’s just that you don’t have a blow out or tire on your car driving down the highway, it’s a relatively new tire or it’s in good condition. This doesn’t happen. You know when you wear down the tire. You are driving down the tire with not enough thread. You know your tires were worn down under unevenly because your steering is out of alignment and then you have a blowout. But just that the incidents happen that day. It doesn’t mean that it’s really building up for a long time.

Kevin: What’s a fantastic analogy.

Jesse: So again going again back to the main point here is first mistake is not dealing with this the first time it happens. Kevin : I see pictures that my chiropractors has shown me about stage one, stage two, stage three maybe you can explain that when pain actually occurs.

Jesse: Sure! There is couple of reasons you can feel pain. As far as back pain in sciatica goes. One is muscular pain so you can damage muscle tissue, you know you can strain some muscles. You can have sore and achy muscles. Friends and a lot of people type and soar back muscles and that is because there body is out of whack. There body is out of balance and their body is kind of thrown their body off. And these certain muscles, you know in this case certain muscles of the lower back. They run up and down the spine. These muscles are constantly being overworked. So instead of being out to work and relax like other muscles, these muscles like have constant tension on them because their body is pulling them constantly where if the spine and pelvis were almost in the neutral position. You know there wouldn’t be a constant tension. So there is this muscular aspect of back pain. Then there is nerve related pain where a disc could be putting pressure on the nerve. A bone or one of the vertebrae could be putting pressure on nerves. A narrowing of the spinal canal could be putting pressure on the nerve.

Kevin: Right!

Jesse: So you always have to keep than in mind the number one to focus on to is getting to the bottom of it and finding out what is that root cause. And so these physical dysfunctions, you know again you body being pulled out of whack and force to function this way. It is caused by the balances in muscles. Primarily they are several other minor things that contribute to. But the number one factor is muscle balances. And basically what that means is, if you have two opposing muscle groups. Let’s say your front of your thighs and back of your thighs. Corte subs and Hamstrings, There are two opposing muscle groups; if those muscle groups are not “Balance” that doesn’t mean balance in strengths. Like if you could do 50 pounds on leg extension and 30 pounds on the leg curl. That doesn’t mean you are out of balance. But out of balance of same point of how much they are pulling on the joint of those muscles affect.



Fioricet blog, know more about fioricet

categoriaHealth commentoNo Comments dataFebruary 2nd, 2010
Read All

Chemoinformatics: Principles and Applications

By fioricetultram


Introduction

The line “Change is must and change is accelerating” is very important in human life. There are several changes occur in each and every aspects of human civilization from the age of Homo erectus to today informational age. The main component of information age is computer which can stored a lot of information giving birth of a discipline namely Informatics. Informatics is Informatics is the discipline of science which investigates the structure and properties (not specific content) of scientific information, as well as the regularities of scientific information activity, its theory, history, methodology and organization. The science of informatics is applied indifferent field of science giving birth of different discipline namely Bioinformatics, Chemoinformatics, Geoinformatics, Health informatics, Laboratory informatics, Neuroinformatics, Social informatics.

The term “Chemoinformatics” appeared a few years ago and rapidly gained widespread use. Workshops and symposia are organized that are exclusively devoted to chemoinformatics, and many job advertisements can be found in journals. The first mention of chemoinformatics may be attributed to Frank Brown.

The use of information technology and management has become a critical part of the drug discovery process as well as to solve the chemical problems. So, chemoinformatics is the mixing of those information resources to transform data into information and information into knowledge for the intended purpose of making better decisions faster in the area of drug lead identification and organization.

Whereas we see here chemoinformatics focused on drug design. Greg Paris came up with a much broader definition Chemoinformatics is a generic term that encompasses the design, creation, organization, management, retrieval, analysis, dissemination, visualization, and use of chemical information. Clearly, the transformation of data into information and of information into knowledge is an endeavor needed in any branch of chemistry not only in drug design. The view that chemoinformatics methods are needed in all areas of chemistry and adhere to a much broader definition:

chemoinformatics is the application of informatics methods to solve chemical problems.

Why do we have to use informatics methods in chemistry?

First of all, chemistry has produced an enormous amount of data and this data avalanche is rapidly increasing. More than 45 million chemical compounds are known and this number is increasing by several millions each year. Novel techniques such as combinatorial chemistry and high-throughput screening generate huge amounts of data. All this data and information can only be managed and made accessible by storing them in proper databases. That is only possible through chemoinformatics.

On the other hand, for many problems the necessary information is not available. We know the 3D structure, determined by X ray crystallography for about 300,000 organic compounds. Or, as another point, the largest database of infrared spectra contains about 200,000 spectra. Although these numbers may seem large, they are small in comparison to the number of known compounds: We know from less than 1% of all compounds their 3D structure or have their infrared spectra. The question is then; can we gain enough knowledge from the known data to make predictions for those cases where the required information is not available?

There is another reason why we need informatics methods in chemistry: Many problems in chemistry are too complex to be solved by methods based on first principles through theoretical calculations. This is true, for the relationships between the structure of a compound and its biological activity, or for the influence of reaction conditions on chemical reactivity.

All these problems in chemistry require novel approaches for managing large amounts of chemical structures and data, for knowledge extraction from data, and for modeling complex relationships. This is where chemoinformatics methods can come in.

The representation of the chemoinformatics in graphical form is given below.

Source: authors

Extracting knowledge from chemical information -lots of data (structure, activities, genes, etc) i.e. called as inductive learning. When we extract data from knowledge, it is called as deductive learning.

Is it Cheminformatics or Chemoinformatics?

The name of our favourite field maybe cheminformatics or chemoinformatics chemiinformatics, molecular informatics, chemical informatics, or even chemobioinformatics. All these options have some advantages. By using short cheminformatics you are saving the keyboard of your computer, chemoinformatics sounds nice in sentences like “… our software solution seamlessly integrates chemoinformatics and bioinformatics …”, and the title “Head of chemobioinformatics” on a business card cannot miss the point. Molecular informatics or chemical informatics is less known, but this also means that you are one of the pioneers on the forefront of a new scientific field. But the name of chemoinformatics and cheminformatics are synonymous in use. In the following table frequencies of words cheminformatics and chemoinformatics in web pages are listed, as determined by a popular search engine Google. The ratio characterizes popularity of term cheminformatics over chemoinformatics.

Year Cheminformatics Chemoinformatics Ratio

2000 39 684 0.05

2001 8,010 2,910 2.75

2002 34,000 16,000 2.12

2203 58,143 32,872 1.77

2204 85,435 60,439 1.41

2005 6,58,298 2,72,096 2.41

2006 3,17,000+ 1,63,000+ 1.94

Source: Leach AR. et.al. (2003)

History of Chemoinformatics

The first, and still the core, journal for the subject, the Journal of Chemical Documentation, started in 1961 (the name Changed to the Journal of Chemical Information and computer Science in 1975). Then the first book appeared in 1971 (Lynch, Harrison, Town and Ash, Computer Handling of Chemical Structure Information). The first international conference on the subject was held in 1973 at Noordwijkerhout and every three years since 1987. The term Chemoinformatics was given by Brown in 1998.

With all the problems at hand in chemistry, complex relationships, profusion of data, lack of necessary data, quite early on the need was felt in many areas of chemistry to have resort to informatics methods. These various roots of chemoinformatics often go back more than 40 years into the 1960s.

1. Chemical Structure Representation

In the early sixties, various forms of machine readable chemical structure representations were explored as a basis for building databases of chemical structures and reactions. Eventually, connection tables that represent molecules by lists of the atoms and of the bonds in a molecule gained universal acceptance. Connection tables were also used for the Chemical Abstracts Registry System which appeared in the second half of the sixties.

A connection table stores the same information that is present in a 2D structure diagram, namely the atoms that are present in a molecule and what bonds exist between the atoms. However, it is stored in a table form which is much easier for a computer to work with. Before a connection table is produced, the atoms in the molecule must be numbered, and an atom lookup table produced. This simply stores atom information (usually just the atom type) cross referenced with the atom number. Here is a numbering and atom lookup table for acetaminophen:

Num Atom

Type

1 C

2 C

3 C

4 N

5 C

6 O

7 C

8 C

9 C

10 C

11 O

Source: authors

The atom lookup table describes the atoms present in a molecule, but says nothing about how they are connected.

The connection table describes how atoms are connected by bonds, and has a row and a column for each atom, the row and column number representing the number given to the atom.

Source: authors

For example, if a bond exists between atom 5 and atom 8, then a “1” is placed at the intersection of row 5 and column 8 (and also row 8 and column 5), otherwise a 0 is placed at the intersection. Further, we may use a 2 to represent a double bond, 3 to represent a triple bond, and so on. Here is the connection table for Acetaminophen, along with the diagram showing which numbers correspond to which atoms.

For clarity, the non-zero entries are showing in bold. Note how the table is symmetrical about the diagonal from top left to bottom right. This will always be the case since, for example, if atom 3 is bonded to atom 2, then atom 2 is also by definition bonded to atom 3. Since this connection table effectively stores each piece of information twice, it is called a redundant connection table. Normally, we just store one half of the table in a non-redundant connection table as shown below:

Source: authors

2. Structure Searching

This involves searching a database for an exact match with a specified query structure. For example, if the following is the query.

Then only an exact match to this structure would be returned by a search. The techniques used to perform the search won’t be covered here, but basically they involve treating the 2D connection table as a mathematical graph, where the nodes represent atoms and the edges represent bonds, and then a test for exact match can be done using a graph isomorphism algorithm (a standard computer science technique).

A connection table is essentially a representation of the molecular graph (A graph is a mathematical conceptualization of anything that consists of connected points).Therefore, for storing a unique representation of a molecule and for allowing its retrieval, the graph isomorphism problem had to be solved to define from a set of potential representations of a molecule a single one as the unique one.

The first solution was the Morgan algorithm for numbering the atoms of a molecule in a unique and unambiguous manner. By Morgan algorithm atoms of the same elemental type can be topologically equivalent or not is judged. Let us label the carbons C, CH and CH1H2, and the hydrogens H, H1 and H2. Obviously, only atoms of the same elemental type can be topologically equivalent. Thus, it is immediately clear that the carbon atoms can be separated from the hydrogen atoms.

The algorithm proceeds by analyzing the extended connectivity in the following way. A score is assigned to each atom. Initially, the scores are computed by counting the number of bonds formed by each atom: i.e. C = 1, CH = 3 and CH1H2 = 3. This tells us that C is unique; hence, amongst the carbons, only CH and CH1H2 can possibly be topologically equivalent. All the hydrogens have a score (i.e. sum connectivity) of 1. In the second iteration, the new score of each atom is calculated by summing the first-iteration scores of all the atoms to which it is bonded. CH gets a score of 1 (C) + 1 (H) + 3 (CH1H2) = 5. CH1H2 gets a score of 3 (CH) + 1 (H1) + 1 (H2) = 5. H gets a score of 3. H1 and H2 also get scores of 3. Scores based on summing the atomic numbers of bound atoms are also computed: CH gets a score of 13, CH1H2 gets a score of 8 and the protons all score 6. This means that CH is distinct from CH1H2. In the third cycle of iteration, the scores based on numbers of bonds become 5 for all the protons, but the scores based on atomic numbers become 13 for H, and 8 for H1 and H2. Thus, H is distinct from H1 and H2.The termination criterion for the iterative process is when no further atoms can be assigned as unique by an iteration. At this point, we know which atoms are grouped together: those that had the same score at each iteration are topologically equivalent. In this example, the fourth pass shows that H1 and H2 are equivalent. This provided the basis for full structure searching. Then, methods were developed for substructure searching, for similarity searching, and for 3D structure searching.

Substructure searching

A substructure search involves finding all the structures in a database that contain one or more particular structural fragments. For example, we might want to find all of the structures in a database which contain the nitro group:

Substructure searching requires some method of specifying a query (i.e., we want to find this and that, but not this, etc). One popular example is SMARTS, an extension to SMILES. Mathematically, substructure searching is performed, as with structure searching, using a graph representation, but this time a subgraph isomorphism algorithm finds occurrences of subgraphs (i.e. substructures) in a structure.

Similarity searching

Similarity searching involves looking for all the structures in a database that are highly similar to a given structure. The most common use is to find compounds that could exhibit similar properties (based on the similar property principle that compounds with similar structures are likely to exhibit similar biological behaviors). Note that “similarity” is a subjective thing. As an example, a similarity search might involve looking for structures with a similarity greater than 0.7 to this molecule

Obviously some method is required for measuring similarity. This is usually done using fingerprint representations and similarity coefficients as described below, which are used in various applications that involve measurement of similarity, for example cluster analysis.

Fingerprint representations

A fingerprint characterizes the 2D structure of a molecule, usually through a string of ‘1’s and ‘0’s. There are two basic types of fingerprint: structural keys and hashed fingerprints.

Structural Keys -Structural keys contain a string of bits (‘1’s and ‘0’s) where each bit is set to 1 or 0 depending on the presence or absence of a particular fragment. They usually employ a pre-defined dictionary of fragments.

Hashed fingerprints- In hashed fingerprints, there is no set dictionary or 1:1 relationship between bits and features. All possible fragments in a compound are generated. The number of fragments represented can be huge. Thus rather than assigning one bit position for each fragment, the bits are “hashed” down onto a fixed number of bits. Thus hashed fingerprints are a less precise form, but they carry more information.

Once fingerprint representations are available, similarity coefficients can be used to give a measure of similarity between two fingerprints.

3. Quantitative Structure Activity / Property Relationship (QSAR/QSPR)

Building on work by Hammett and Taft in the fifties, Hansch and Fujita showed in 1964 that the influence of substituents on biological activity data can be quantified.

In the last 40 years, an enormous amount of work on relating descriptors derived from molecular structures with a variety of physical, chemical, or biological data has appeared. These studies have established Quantitative Structure-Activity Relationships (QSAR) and Quantitative Structure-Property Relationships (QSPR) as fields of their own, with their own journals, societies, and conferences.

Percent Spikelet Sterility (% Ss) of N-acylanilines Tested in Winter 2001-02 at 1500 ppm Spray Concentrations on PBW 343

Source: Gasteiger J. et.al. (2006)

Modern QSAR involves applying artificial intelligence and Statistical techniques to 2D or 3D molecular representations.

SAR Application

Source: R. K. Lindsay et. al. (1980).

At the time of drug design, we have to look after these following points-

• Single therapeutic target

• Drug like chemical

• Some toxicity anticipated

• Multiple unknown targets

• Diverse Structures

• Human and ecosystems

4. Chemometrics

Initially, the quantitative analysis of chemical data relied exclusively on multilinear regression analysis. However, it was soon recognized in the late sixties that the diversity and complexity of chemical data need a wide range of different and more powerful data analysis methods. Pattern recognition methods were introduced in the seventies to analyze chemical data. In the nineties, artificial neural networks gained prominence for analyzing chemical data. The growing of this area led to the establishment of chemometrics as a discipline of its own with its own society, journals, and scientific meetings.

Source: R. K. Lindsay et. al. (1980).

An artificial neural network (ANN) or commonly just neural network (NN) is an interconnected group of artificial neurons that uses a mathematical model or computational model for information processing based on a connectionist approach to computation.

5. Molecular Modeling

In the late sixties, R. Langridge and coworkers developed methods for visualizing 3D molecular models on the screens of Cathode Ray Tubes. At the same time, G. Marshall started visualizing protein structure on graphic screens. The progress in hardware and software technology, particularly as concerns graphics screens and graphics cards, has led to highly sophisticated systems for the visualization of complex molecular structures in great detail. Programs for 3D structure generation, for protein modeling, and for molecular dynamics calculations have made molecular modeling a widely used technique. The commonly available softwares for molecular modeling are ArgusLab, Chimera, and Ghemical.

6. Computer-Assisted Structure Elucidation (CASE)

The elucidation of the structure of a chemical compound, be it a reaction product or a compound isolated as a natural product, is one of the fundamental tasks of a chemist. Structure elucidation has to consider a wide variety of different types of information mostly from various spectroscopic methods, and has to consider many structure alternatives. Thus, it is an ambitious and demanding task. It is therefore not surprising that chemists and computer scientists had taken up the challenge and had started in the 1960?fs to develop systems for computer-assisted structure elucidation (CASE) as a field of exercise for artificial intelligence techniques. The DENDRAL project, initiated in 1964 at Stanford University gained widespread interest.

Other approaches to computer-assisted structure elucidation were initiated in the late sixties by Sasaki at Toyohashi University of Technology and by Munk at the University of Arizona.

7. Computer-Assisted Synthesis Design (CASD)

The design of a synthesis for an organic compound needs a lot of knowledge about chemical reactions and on chemical reactivity. Many decisions have to be made between various alternatives as to how to assemble the building blocks of a molecule and which reactions to choose. Therefore, computer-assisted synthesis design (CASD) was seen as a highly interesting challenge and as a field for applying artificial intelligence techniques. In 1969 Corey and Wipke presented their seminal work on the first steps in the development of a synthesis design system. Nearly simultaneously several other groups such as Ugi and coworkers, Hendrickson and Gelernter reported on their work on CASD systems. Later also at Toyohashi work on a CASD system was initiated.

Basics of Chemoinformatics

The various fields outlined in the previous section have grown from humble beginnings 40 years ago to areas of intensive activities. On top of that it has been realized that these areas share a large number of common problems, rely on highly related data, and work with similar methods. Thus, these different areas have merged to a discipline of its own: Chemoinformatics.

Figure 1. The various areas of activities in chemoinformatics

Source: Lipinski, C.A et.al., (1997)

The extent of this field has recently been documented by a “Handbook of Chemoinformatics”, covering 73 contributions by 65 scientists on 1850 pages in four volumes. The following gives an overview of chemoinformatics, emphasizing the problems and solutions – common to the various more specialized subfields.

1. Representation of Chemical Compounds

A whole range of methods for the computer representation of chemical compounds and structures has been developed: linear codes, connection tables, matrices. Special methods had to be devised to uniquely represent a chemical structure, to perceive features such as rings and aromaticity, and to treat stereochemistry, 3D structures, or molecular surfaces. Earlier the chemical 2D structure representations are done by software namely Chemdraw, ISIS etc. But now, chemical structures are represented by molecular graph. A graph is an abstract structure that contains nodes connected by edges. Here nodes are represented by atoms and edges by bonds. A graph represents only topology of a molecules i.e. the ways the nodes i.e. atoms are connected.

Aspirin

Source: J. Zupan et.al.,(1999).

The aspirin structure can be represented by Graph theory, where Oxygen atom is represented by filled bullet and carbon atom is represented by vacant bullet and hydrogen atom is not represented here. So, the aspirin structure will be-

For similarities searching we can use the graph isomorphism or by any algorithm.

Linear notations

Structure linear notations convert chemical structure connection tables to a string, a sequence of letters, using a set of rules. The earliest structure linear notation was the Wiswesser Line Notation (WLN). ISI® adopted WLN to be used in some of their products in 1968 and, it is still use today. It was also adopted in the mid 1960s for internal use by many pharmaceutical companies. At that time (mid 60s to 80s), it was considered the best tool to represent, retrieve and print chemical structures. In WLN, letters represents structural fragments and a complete structure is represented as a string. This system efficiently compressed structural data and, was very useful to storing and searching chemical structures in low performance computer systems. However, the WLN is difficult for non- experts to understand. Later, David Weininger suggested a new linear notation designated as SMILESTM. Since SMILESTM is very close to the “natural language” used by organic chemists, SMILESTM is widely accepted and used in many chemical database systems. To successfully represent a structure, a linear notation should be canonicalized. That is, one structure should not correspond to more than one linear notation string, and conversely, one linear notation string should only be interpreted as one structure.

Attempt to condense all of the connectivity information into a single text string. The two most popular formats are SMILES (from Daylight) and SLN (Tripos format inspired by SMILES).

SMILES (Simplified Molecular Input Line Entry Specification)

Acetaminophen

In SMILES, atoms are generally represented by their chemical symbol, with upper-case representing an aliphatic atom (C = aliphatic carbon, N = aliphatic nitrogen, etc) and lower-case representing an aromatic atom (c = aromatic carbon, etc). Hydrogens are not normally represented explicitly. Consecutive characters represent atoms bonded together with a single bond. Therefore, the SMILES for propane would simply be: CCC or 1-propanol would be: CCCO. Double bonds are represented by an “=” sign, e.g. propene would be: C=CC. Parentheses are used to represent branching in the molecule, e.g. the SMILES for Isopropyl alcohol (2-propanol) is: CC(O)C. Atoms other than the major organic ones (C, S, N, O, P, Cl, Br, I, B) or ions must be enclosed in square brackets. Ring enclosures are represented by using numbers to signify attachment points, usually starting at 1. The first occurrence of the number defines the attachment point, and subsequent occurrences indicate that the structure joins back to the attachment point at that position. For example, the SMILES for Benzene is as follows (note the small ‘c’ for aromatic carbon): c1ccccc1. We can also use branching from the ring system, e.g.

c1cc(Br)ccc1 represents bromobenzene. Note that in many cases there can be several SMILES to represent the same structure – for example, we could alternatively represent bromobenzene as: c1cccc(Br)c1. So here is a SMILES representation for acetaminophen, the structure at the top of this document: c1c(O)ccc(NC(=O)C)c1. The great advantage of these methods is brevity – for example an entire SMILES string can be stored in a single spreadsheet cell. However, it is hard to add additional information (coordinates, properties, etc) in these formats in an elegant way.

Canonicalization

If a structure corresponds to a unique WLN or a unique SMILESTM string, then the structure search results in a string match. WLN could meet this requirement in most cases. The SMILESTM approach can do this after canonical processing. Therefore, both WLN and canonical SMILESTM are able to solve structure search problems by string matches. A molecular graph (2D structure) can also be canonicalized into a real number through a mathematical algorithm. The real number is identified as a molecular topologic index. However, two different structures can have the same topologic index. Therefore, topologic indices can only be used as screens for accelerating structure database searching. Actually, the concept of molecular index was originally proposed for QSAR and QSPR studies. Wiener reported the first molecular topological index in 1947 [25]. If a molecule and its specific topologic index had a one-to-one relationship, then structure search could be done by number comparison [25]. However, substructure search still had to use an atom-by-atom matching algorithm, which, as mentioned earlier, could be very time-consuming. In order to further enhance chemical database search performance, efforts have been on the way to seek better structural screening technologies.

Sources of 3d informations and the Representation of molecules in 3D Form.

3D information can be obtained through X-ray crystallography, NMR spectroscopy or by computational means. The basic forms of 3D representation are the coordinate table and the distance matrix.

A coordinate table is simply an extension of the atom lookup table that also contains coordinates for each atom. These coordinates are relative to a consistent origin. Here is a sample coordinate table for Aspirin, along with a 3D structure with the atoms numbered:

Source: Gasteiger, J., (2003)

Distance matrices are similar to connection tables, except that instead of storing connectivity information, they store relative distances (in Angstroms) between all atoms.

Here is a sample distance matrix for the Aspirin molecule above. Many pattern recognition techniques require distance or similarity measurements to quantitatively measure the distance or similarity of two objects (in our case, the objects are small molecules). Euclidean distance, Mahalanobis distance and correlation coefficients are commonly used for distance measurement,

where n is the number of descriptors, D represents the absolute distance between A and B, R represents the angle of vectors A and B in multidimensional space and, is interpreted as the quantity of the linear correlation of A and B. The value range of R is between –1 to +1 that is, from 100% dissimilar to 100% similar. The Euclidian distance assumes that variables are uncorrelated. When variables are correlated, the simple Euclidean distance is not an appropriate measure, however, the Mahalanobis distance (2) will adequately account such correlations. The Tanimoto coefficient is commonly employed for similarity measurements of bit-strings of structural fingerprints (Boolean logic). The simplified form is

where ? is the count of substructures in structure A, ? the count of substructures in structure B, and ? is the count of substructures in both A and B. Many different similarity calculations have been reported. Holliday, Hu and Willett have published a comparison of 22 similarity coefficients for the calculation of inter-molecular similarity and dissimilarity, using 2D fragment bit-strings [51].

Source: Gasteiger, J., (2003)

Distance matrices are useful when comparing molecules with each other, whereas coordinate tables tend to be used for structure visualization.

2. Representation of Chemical Reactions

Chemical reactions are represented by the starting materials and products as well as by the reaction conditions. On top of that, one also has to indicate the reaction site, the bonds broken and made in a chemical reaction. Furthermore, the stereochemistry of reactions has to be handled. Searching databases of reactions is a little different to straight searching, although the kinds of search are the same (structure, substructure, similarity). However, searching may be done on reactants, products, or both, and searches may be performed for entire reactions (as opposed to single structures). Representation of reactions is by the usual means (connection tables, atom lookup tables), but with additional information about which molecules are products and reagents, and which reagent atoms map to which product atoms. A derivative of SMILES, called Reaction SMILES is available for representing reactions, along with a way for defining reaction queries called SMIRKS.

3. Data in Chemistry

Much of our chemical knowledge has been derived from data. Chemistry offers a rich range of data on physical, chemical, and biological properties: binary data for classification, real data for modeling, and spectral data having a high information density. These data have to be brought into a form amenable to easy exchange of information and to data analysis

4. Datasources and Databases

The enormous amount of data in chemistry has led quite early on to the development of databases to store and disseminate these data in electronic form. Databases have been developed for chemical literature, for chemical compounds, for 3D structures, for reactions, for spectra, etc. The internet is increasingly used to distribute data and information in chemistry. The databases of virtual molecules are available now i.e. the molecules which are not present in the nature, but by just virtually we can prepare databases with the help of databases of other molecules. The commonly available softwares for databases are Amicbase, Asinex Gold, Cheminformatics.org, FDA MRTD, NCI, Otava Dataset, PubChem, and ZINC.

5. Structure Search Methods

In order to retrieve data and information from databases, access has to be provided to chemical structure information. Methods have been developed for full structure, for substructure, and for similarity searching. Those are discussed in above.

6. Methods for Calculating Physical and Chemical Data

A variety of physical and chemical data of compounds can directly be calculated by a range of methods. Foremost are quantum mechanical calculations of various degrees of sophistication. However, simple methods such as additive schemes can also be used to estimate a variety of data with reasonable accuracy.

7. Calculation of Structure Descriptors

In most cases, however, physical, chemical, or biological properties cannot be directly calculated from the structure of a compound. In this situation, an indirect approach has to be taken by, first, representing the structure of the compound by structure descriptors, and, then, to establish a relationship between the structure descriptors and the property by analyzing a series of pairs of structure descriptors and associated properties by inductive learning methods. A variety of structure descriptors has been developed encoding 1D, 2D, or 3D structure information or molecular surface properties. The manipulation and analysis of chemical structure information is made through the molecular structure descriptors. These are the numerical values which characterizes propertities of molecules. They may represents the physiochemical properties of a molecule or may b the values derived from the algorithm technique to the chemical structures. For example, the molecular weight does not represent the whole properties of a molecule but it is very quick. In case of quantum molecular based structure descriptors, it tells about the properties of a molecule but it is time consuming.

The commonly used molecular descriptors are logP and molar refractivity. Hydrophobicity is most commonly modeled using the logarithm values of partition coefficient i.e. logP.

8. Data Analysis Methods

A variety of methods for learning from data, of inductive learning methods is being used in chemistry: statistics, pattern recognition methods, artificial neural networks, genetic algorithms. These methods can be classified into unsupervised and supervised learning methods and are used for classification or quantitative modeling. The softwares are using in data analysis & statistics are ChemTK Lite, PowerMV, & GCluto.

Chemistry Based Data Mining and Exploration

For synthesis a molecule, first we have to search data with the help databases available for that molecule, then we have to search the database available for structure analogue. Now the Structure activity relationships are studied and different biological or mechanistic analogue are synthesized. The scheme is given in below……

Applications of Chemoinformatics

a.Fields of Chemistry

The range of applications of chemoinformatics is rich indeed; any field of chemistry can profit from its methods. The following lists different areas of chemistry and indicates some typical applications of chemoinformatics. It has to be emphasized that this list of applications is by far not complete!

1. Chemical Information

o storage and retrieval of chemical structures and associated data to manage the flood of data by the softwares are available for drawing and databases.

o dissemination of data on the internet

o cross-linking of data to information

2. All fields of chemistry

o prediction of the physical, chemical, or biological properties of compounds

3. Analytical Chemistry

o analysis of data from analytical chemistry to make predictions on the quality, origin, and age of the investigated objects

o elucidation of the structure of a compound based on spectroscopic data

4. Organic Chemistry

o prediction of the course and products of organic reactions

o design of organic syntheses

5. Drug Design as well as for bioactive molecules.

o identification of new lead structures

o optimization of lead structures

o establishment of quantitative structure-activity relationships

o comparison of chemical libraries

o definition and analysis of structural diversity

o planning of chemical libraries

o analysis of high-throughput data

o docking of a ligand into a receptor

Finally, small molecules can be used for docking and drug screening/discovery. Small molecules, as well as their synthetic derivatives, can be docked to a protein target and computationally filtered (e.g. by solubility) to produce a ranked list of candidates that can then be tested in the laboratory. Known ligands can also be used in similarity searches, or as scaffold for further molecular engineering. We will present several recent drug discovery efforts that leverage ChemDB and the computational tools described above. In particular, the discovery of several compounds has done that can bind to the Carboxyltransferase domain of Acyl-CoA Carboxylase, AccD5 from Mycobacterium tuberculosis:, a new TB therapeutic target.

o prediction of the metabolism of xenobiotics

o analysis of biochemical pathways

o Modeling of ADME-Tox properties.

Historically, drug absorption, distribution, metabolism, excretion, and toxicity (ADMET) studies in animal models were performed after a lead compound was identified. Now, pharmaceutical companies are employing higher-throughput, in vitro assays to evaluate the ADMET characteristics of potential leads at earlier stages of development. This is done in order to eliminate candidates as early as possible, thus avoiding costs, which would have been expended on chemical synthesis and biological testing. Scientists are developing computational methods to select only compounds with reasonable ADMET properties for screening. Molecules from these computationally screened virtual libraries can then be synthesized for high-throughput biological activity screening. As the predictive ability of ADME/Tox software improves, and as pharmaceutical companies incorporate computational prediction methods into their R&D programs, the drug discovery process will move from a screening based to a knowledge-based paradigm. Under multi-parametric optimization drug discovery strategies, there is no excuse for failing to know the relative solubility and permeability rankings of collections of chemical compounds for lead identification.

a. Absorption. Passive intestinal absorption (PIA) models have been studied by many groups, for years. The fluid mosaic model holds that the structure of a cell membrane is an interrupted phospholipid bilayer capable of both hydrophilic and hydrophobic interactions. Trans cellular passage through the membrane lipid/aqueous environment is the predominant pathway for passive absorption of lipophilic compounds, while low-molecular-weight (300) of molecular descriptors (constitutional, topological, geometrical, electrostatic, quantum-chemical and thermodynamic) calculated using quantum-chemical semi empirical methodology.

Chemo bioinformatics

Biochemoinformatics (or chemobioinformatics) is a new term to describe the research efforts on meeting the emerging needs for the integration of bioinformatics and chemoinformatics. Historically, bioinformatics and chemoinformatics have largely evolved independently from biology and chemistry. Generally speaking, bioinformatics deals with biological information, which although traditionally refers to sequences information on large biological molecules such as DNA, RNA and proteins, also refers to the more recent emergence of micro array data on gene and protein expression.

Chemoinformatics on the other hand mainly deals with chemical information of drug-like small molecules, the molecular weight of these being several hundred Daltons. The elemental data record in bioinformatics is centered on genes and their products (RNA, protein, and so on), whereas the fundamental data type in chemoinformatics is centered on small molecules.

Source: Drews,J.,(2000)

Key challenges

The key challenge for computational methods then is not traveling through chemical space per se, but rather to be able to focus traveling expeditions in a vast chemical space towards interesting regions, and to be able to recognize interesting stars and galaxies when they are encountered. The notion of what is interesting may vary of course with the task (e.g. drug discovery, reaction discovery, polymer discovery). But at the most fundamental level what is needed are tools to predict the physical, chemical, and biological properties of small molecules and reactions in order to focus searches and filter search results. Computational methods in chemistry can be organized along a spectrum ranging from Schrodinger equation, to molecular dynamics, to statistical machine learning methods. Quantum mechanical methods, or even molecular dynamics methods, are computationally intensive and do not scale well to large datasets. These methods are best applied to specific questions on focused small datasets. Statistical and machine learning methods are more likely to yield successful approaches for rapidly sifting through large datasets of chemical information. Because in the absence of large public database and datasets, chemoinformatics is in a state reminiscent of bioinformatics two or three decades ago, it may be productive to adapt the lessons learnt from bioinformatics to chemoinformatics, while maintaining also a perspective on the fundamental differences between these two relatively young interdisciplinary sciences. If this analogy is correct, two key ingredients were essential for unlocking the large-scale development of bioinformatics and the application of modern statistical machine learning methods to biological data, data and similarity measures. In bioinformatics, such as Genbank, Swissprot, and the PDB while alignment algorithms have provided robust similarity measures with their fast BLAST implementation becoming the workhorse of the field. Mutatis mutandis, the same is likely to be true in chemoinformatics.

This new drug discovery strategy, challenges cheminformatics in the following aspects: (1) cheminformatics should be able to extract knowledge from large-scale raw HTS databases in a shorter time periods, (2) cheminformatics should be able to provide efficient in silico tools to predict ADMET properties,

Conclusions

Chemoinformatics has developed over the last 40 years to a mature discipline that has applications in any area of chemistry. Chemoinformatics is the science of determining those important aspects of molecular structures related to desirable properties for some given function. One can contrast the atomic level concerns of drug design where interaction with another molecule is of primary importance with the set of physical attributes related to ADME, for example. In the latter case, interaction with a variety of macromolecules provides a set of molecular filters that can average out specific geometrical details and allows significant models developed by consideration of molecular properties alone. The field has gained so much in importance that the major topics of chemoinformatics have to be integrated into chemistry curricula, a few universities have to offer full chemoinformatics curricula to satisfy the urgent need for chemoinformation specialists. There are still many problems that await a solution and therefore we still will see many new developments in chemoinformatics.

References

Bhat K; Bock C., Howard NJ.(2002) COS and HTS design of high-performance, non-toxic chemicals for textiles, NTC Project: C00-PH01 (formerly C00-P01)

Brown F.K. (1998), Chemoinformatics: What is it and how does it Impact? Drug Discovery Ann. Reports Med. Chem., 33:375-384.

Clark, D. E. and Pickett, S. D., “Computational methods for the prediction of ‘drug likeness’”, Drug Discov. Today, 2000, 5, 49-58.

Drews J, Drug discovery: a historical perspective, Science, 287 5463: pp1,960-1,964, 2000

Gasteiger J. and Funatsu K. (2006) Chemoinformatics – An Important Scientific Discipline, J. Comput. Chem. Jpn, 5(2): 53–58

Gasteiger, Editor, Handbook of Chemoinformatics – From Data to Knowledge, Wiley-VCH, Weinheim (2003).

Gasteiger, J. T. Engel, Editors Chemoinformatics – A Textbook, Wiley-VCH, Weinheim (2003).

J. Zupan, J. Gasteiger, Neural Networks in Chemistry and Drug Design, 2nd Edition, Wiley-VCH, Weinheim (1999).

Leach AR., Gillet VJ.(2003) An Introduction to Chemoinformatics, Springer:1-57

Lipinski, C.A.; Lombardo, F.; Dominy, B.W.; Feeney, P.J. “Experimental and computational approaches to estimate solubility and permeability in drug discovery and development settings”, Adv. Drug Deliv. Rev., 1997, 23, 3-25.

Oprea, T. I., Davis, A. M., Teague, S. J., and Leeson, P. D. “Is There a Difference between Leads and Drugs? A Historical Perspective”, J. Chem. Inf. Comput. Sci., 2001, 41, 1308 -1315.

R. K. Lindsay, B. G. Buchanan, E. A. Feigenbaum, J. Lederberg, Applications of Artificial Intelligence for Organic Chemistry; the Dendral Project, McGraw-Hill, New York (1980).

Wild J D, Getting Started in Chemoinformatics, Version 1.0, September 2004

Woo. (1996) Environ. Carc. & Ecotox. Rev., C14:1-42

Xu J. and Hagler A. (2002) Chemoinformatics and Drug Discovery, Molecules, 7: 566-600



Buy Tramadol

categoriaHealth commentoNo Comments dataJanuary 30th, 2010
Read All

L-Cysteine a Sulfur Containing Amino Acid to Boost the Detox

By fioricetultram


L-Cysteine is what is known as a non-essential amino acid, meaning that it can be biosynthesized by the body and hence not an essential part of your diet. Due to its possessing a thiol side chain, it is termed a hydrophilic amino acid with an affinity for aqueous systems. Because of this it is relatively highly reactive, and is therefore an important component of a large number of enzymes and proteins.

Although, after all, it is not an essential amino acid, deficiencies can occur in the young and in the old, and also in those suffering certain metabolic diseases. Dietary sources include high-protein foods such as chicken, turkey, pork, dairy products and vegetables such as cereals, broccoli, garlic and onions.

The biochemistry of this amino acid begins with another amino acid known as serine, and also methionine. The latter is fist converted to homocysteine, which is then combined with serine to form cystathionine. This is then converted into cysteine and alpha- ketobutyrate. The thiol group is highly reactive and gives cysteine its biological properties.

L-Cysteine possesses strong antioxidant properties due to the thiol group which easily undergoes redox reactions. However, it is for its detoxification effect on the body that the amino acid is mainly taken as a supplement. It is, therefore, these properties that we shall discuss first.

Cysteine can reduce the toxic effects of alcohol, such as a hangover or the more serious liver damage. The by-product of alcohol metabolism that does most damage and is responsible for the majority of the negative after-effects of excessive alcohol consumption is acetaldehyde. L-Cysteine converts acetaldehyde into the more acceptable acetic acid, and so prevents the aldehyde from having too much of a negative effect on your health and well-being. However, the results obtained from such studies have been from animals only, and the therapeutic effects of cysteine have not yet been tested on humans.

What has been tested and is known is that L-cysteine is effective in the detoxification of heavy metals in the body. A common source of heavy metal toxicity is mercury from amalgam fillings in the teeth. Although the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) declared in 1989 that dental amalgams are a hazardous substance under the Superfund law, many people still have them in their mouths.

The thiol group and L-cysteine has a high affinity for mercury and other heavy metals, as previously stated, and a supplement can be used to remove from the body any mercury leached from mercury-based tooth fillings. It can also be used to bind to copper, lead and cadmium. Lead and cadmium are particularly toxic to the human body, and even though lead is no longer used in plumbing or paints, and cadmium in toys or paints, there are still many sources of these two heavy metals available that can lead to human toxification.

An L-cysteine supplement can be used to remove these heavy metals from the body. Any proteins containing cysteine will tightly bind heavy metals such as lead, cadmium, molybdenum, cobalt and mercury, and allow them to be excreted by the body in the usual fashion. This direct involvement in heavy metal detoxification is a very useful property of this amino acid.

Another detoxification application of L-cysteine is in direct involvement in protecting cellular glutathione levels, and also the prevention of the death of liver cells by acetaminophen poisoning. The latter is of particular interest to many people since acetaminophen is better known as paracetamol, and since this is a freely available over-the-counter drug, overdoses are not unknown. The result of an overdose is the necrosis of liver cells, with eventual liver failure and death.

The treatment of choice is N-acetylcysteine. If used within 10 hours of the overdose it is extremely effective, and even from 16 to 24 hours it is better than other controls. It is believed that the acetylcysteine liberates cysteine which, when available to the liver, enables the biosynthesis of glutathione. Glutathione can then maintain the production of the fifth metabolite required for the specific detoxification of the paracetamol/acetaminophen.

L-Cysteine is also an essential component in the biosynthesis of coenzyme A, an enzyme essential for the production of energy from fats and carbohydrates. It is also a very important component of hair, from which it is commercially produced. Without an adequate intake of L-cysteine the growth of healthy hair would not be possible.

There are several supplemental uses of L-cysteine including the treatment of bronchial conditions for which the amino acid can help to liquefy and clear mucus from the airways and lungs. It is also used to protect against side effects of chemotherapy treatment of cancers and for medical treatments for excessive exposure to radiation.

However, there are certain situations in which L-cysteine should be avoided when at all possible. Diabetics should not use it, and neither should those suffering from cystinuria, whereby large quantities of amino acids, including cystine, are excreted in their urine. L-cystine, incidentally, is formed by oxidation of L-cysteine.

Paradoxically the amino acid is one of the several hundred additives made to tobacco by the cigarette companies. Although, as with the majority of tobacco additives, its purpose is unknown there are two possible reasons for its inclusion. L-Cysteine is a known expectorant, so it could be added to promote the expectoration of mucus in the lungs which is promoted by smoking, and it also increases the production off the antioxidant glutathione that is depleted in smokers.

There are several other non-medical uses for the amino acid, but it is for is its detoxification properties that it is most used as a supplement. However, because it is largely derived from human hair or duck feathers, it may not be classed as kosher or halal in spite of many claims made to that effect, though the more expensive source of microbial fermentation from corn sugar can be.

The substance is recognized as safe by the FDA, and must be labeled as L-cysteine when it is present in a preparation intended for its therapeutic effects. Keep in mind however, that it should be avoided by diabetics. Look to your local or internet health food store for the amino acid L-cysteine.



acetaminophen

categoriaHealth commentoNo Comments dataJanuary 29th, 2010
Read All

Does Back Pain Medication Confuse You? Check Out These Simple Facts

By fioricetultram


Back pain medication is considered as quite helpful for dealing with pain. It can also take care of swelling and muscle tension. It is usually given alongside other treatment procedures like physiotherapy.

There are several kinds of medicines that are available for back pain. While some of them require a prescription, there are others that can be obtained without one as well. The kinds of medicines commonly used against back pain are:

NSAIDs or Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs help in reducing pain and lessening the swelling of the affected area. There is a whole range of medicines belonging to this category. You can settle on the one that would suit you depending upon the constitution of your body. There are certain medicines that fulfill the function of relaxing the muscles of the back. These help in diminishing the tension of the muscles so that the muscles can become relatively more active. Certain strong painkillers like opioids are often needed only for a short period. These might be required after surgical procedures to enable sufficient back movement for light physical exercises. Tylenol or Acetaminophen is a painkiller as well. It generally does not work to diminish swelling. It is used quite commonly for relatively minor back pain. It can take care of most of the problems related to muscles.

Back pain medication is considered as quite efficient and even essential at times. Nonetheless, before you start taking medicines for back pain, there are certain points that you must be conscious of:

There are quite a few drugs (NSAIDs, for instance) that can have serious side effects like stomachache and so on. Strong painkillers can cause addiction at times, which needless to say, can create innumerable other problems. This may not necessarily happen since these are usually taken for limited durations. Nevertheless, you should be conscious of this possibility and discuss it with your doctor. If you have been facing any kind of problems involving your liver, you should be cautious while using Tylenol. This precaution also applies to people whose alcohol intake is on the higher side.

Back pain medication is very important at times when it comes to handling pain even if you are averse to consuming medicines. Severe pain that lasts longer than you would want it to, can lead to other serious health hazards. These hazards do not just include physical disorders but emotional ones as well. Since medicines can help you out on that front quite effectively, it is generally considered wise to take their assistance.

Conversely, you must keep in mind the negatives that come along with the baggage of some of these medicines. Before you start taking any medicine for your back pain, make sure that you know everything there is to know about it. Discuss its side-effects with your doctor and see if you can manage those comfortably. Also, pay due attention to the instructions relating to the medicine’s storage and dosage. Finally, tell your doctor if a particular medicine does not suit you and needs to be changed.



cialis

categoriaHealth commentoNo Comments dataJanuary 26th, 2010
Read All
Page 20 of 32« First...10181920212230...Last »