European Paediatric Formulation Initiative workshop report: Improving the administration of oral liquid medicines in paediatrics using dosing syringes and enteral accessories.

Accurate dosing of the right medicine to the right patient is a key element of safe and efficacious pharmacotherapy, yet prone to technical challenges and human error when dosing involves the administration of small volumes of liquid medicines. For this reason, the topic has gained increased attention over the last decade from multiple stakeholder parties e.g. academia, hospital pharmacy, the medical device and pharmaceutical industry, and regulatory agencies. It is now well acknowledged that spoons and cups are not suitable for the measurement of small volumes of oral liquid medicines and that syringes are a better alternative, but syringes for parenteral use should not be used for oral dosing in order to avoid accidental parenteral delivery of oral products. However, dosing accuracy of very small volumes of liquid medicines to young children, and especially pre-term neonates, is still not sufficiently ensured. A workshop was organised in 2018 by the European Paediatric Formulation Initiative to reflect on current status and challenges (first part) and possible strategies to improve the present situation (second part). A voting system (n = 24) was used to consider the most favourable solutions. The harmonisation and/or standardisation of the technical design of oral syringes (including e.g. female/male connection) was considered a key priority.

Ozonolysis of organic compounds and mixtures in solution. Part I: Oleic, maleic, nonanoic and benzoic acids.

In this paper, infrared spectroscopic and mass spectrometric studies of the ozonolysis of some simple proxies of precursors to organic materials found in atmospheric aerosols is reported. Oleic and maleic acids are used as proxies of reactive material, containing unsaturation which is amenable to ozonolysis. Nonanoic acid and benzoic acid are utilised as co-reactants which, although not likely to undergo direct ozonolysis themselves, are potential reaction partners to the Criegee radical intermediates formed from oleic and maleic acid ozonolysis. The precursor species are studied as single components in solution, followed by co-reaction studies. The products of the ozonolysis are followed by mass spectrometry and infrared spectroscopy. The product distributions from oleic and maleic acid are broadly in agreement with those observed in other studies. In the co-reaction studies, new evidence for cross-reaction products is obtained. Furthermore, the nature of some of the products does not fully comply with the widely accepted Ziemann scheme.