Evaluation of drug and poison information center in Saudi Arabia during the period 2000-2002.

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the profile of the requestors, the number and content of questions which were received during the period of May 2000 - December 2002. METHODS: A total of 1967 requests were evaluated. The questions were sorted according to source of callers, caller identification, the content of the questions, search data and time required to answer the questions. All data analysis were performed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences Version 9.0. RESULTS: The questions were received from different places, including Riyadh (90.1%), overall the Kingdom (8.9%) and gulf countries (1%). The Drug and Poison Information Center (DPIC) provides information to pharmacists, community, employee of King Saud University, physicians, nurses, dentists and others. The type of requests most frequently inquired about were drug related, health related, article/information, and poisoning. Requested data include information about therapeutics uses, drug identification, articles, adverse effects, dosage/administration, drug interactions, poisoning, with very few questions about availability, pregnancy and lactation, and IV incompatibilities. The most common resources used were Drugdex and internet, reference books, Iowa Drug Information Services (IDIS), PubMed and Poisondex. The time devoted to the service is varied ranging from 5 minutes to weeks. CONCLUSION: This study emphasizes on how important to document type of the activities of the DPIC to be used as a vital quality assurance tool. It also revealed the need to stimulate more requestors particularly physicians by advertising the drug information activities or possibly by establishing a website for the DPIC.

Drug-induced pulmonary fibrosis.

Pulmonary fibrosis is characterized by the accumulation of excessive connective tissue in the lungs. Its causes include chronic administration of some drugs for example bleomycin, cyclophosphamide, amiodarone, procainamide, penicillamine, gold and nitrofurantoin; exposure to certain environmental factors such as gases, asbestos and silica and bacterial or fungal infections. Some systemic diseases also predispose to the disease for example rheumatoid arthritis and systemic lupus erythematosus. The disease is associated with release of oxygen radicals and some mediators such as tumor necrosis factor-alpha TNF-alpha, transforming growth factor-beta TGF-beta, PDGF, IGF-I, ET-I and interleukins 1, 4, 8 and 13. The symptoms of the disease include dyspnea, non-productive cough, fever and damage to the lung cells. It is diagnosed with the aid of chest radiography, high resolution computed tomographic scanning and the result of pulmonary function tests. Drug-induced pulmonary fibrosis may involve release of free oxygen radicals and various cytokines for example IL-Ibeta and TNF-alpha via activation of nuclear transcription factor NF-beta as in the case of bleomycin and mitomycin or via release of TGF-beta as in case of tamoxifen or via inhibition of macrophages' and lymphocytes' phospholipases as in the case of amiodarone with the resultant accumulation of phospholipids and reduction of the immune system.