Prevention of the exposure by cyclophosphamide oral tablet.

BACKGROUND: Unintended exposure to antitumor agents from an oral medicine may place healthcare workers and patients taking medicine at risk. In this study, the exposure to blister pack by CP (cyclophosphamide) and appropriate preventive procedures were examined. FINDINGS: CP detected inside the blister pack of the tested seven lots by LC-MS/MS ranged from 8.2 to 199.6 ng. Raman imaging clearly showed that CP ingredient was completely covered by the tablet coating layer and had not leached out of the tablet. In addition, the amount of CP detected inside the vials was suppressed under the lower detection limit until day 28, and only 6.0 ng was detected only at day 56. CONCLUSIONS: Various amounts of CP were contaminated to not only the inside of the blister pack but also the outside. This contamination may be caused not only by the manufacturing environment but also by the CP oral tablets themselves through volatilization of CP. Refrigerated storage of CP oral tablets may protect healthcare workers and patients from contact with CP.

Effects of boiling on the antihypertensive and antioxidant activities of onion.

This study was designed to show the effect of boiling on the antihypertensive and antioxidant activities of onion in N(G)-nitro-L-arginine methyl ester (L-NAME) induced-hypertensive rats and spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR). Male 6-wk-old Sprague-Dawley rats were made hypertensive by being given distilled water containing L-NAME at a dose of 50 mg/kg BW/d. These rats were fed diets containing raw or boiled onion at a concentration of 5%. Raw onion significantly reduced the increase in systolic blood pressure in both L-NAME induced-hypertensive rats and SHR, and inhibited the increase in thiobarbituric acid-reactive substances (TBARS) and conjugated dienes in the plasma and tissues of SHR. The antihypertensive effect of boiled onion was not found, and the antioxidant activity of it was much weaker than that of raw onion. The excretion of nitric oxide metabolites (NOx) in urine was enhanced by raw onion in both L-NAME induced-hypertensive rats and SHR, and was enhanced by boiled onion only in SHR. In conclusion, our results suggested that the anti-hypertensive activity of onion disappeared during boiling, and the disappear of the antihy-pertensive activity of raw onion after boiling might come, in part, from a decrease of the antioxidative activity of onion, with a consequent reduction in the saving of nitric oxide (NO).