Use of Suvorexant and Antipsychotics in the Treatment of Delirium After Infectious Diseases: A Retrospective Study.

BACKGROUND: Delirium is often treated on a subjective basis and per the discretion of the attending physician because of a lack of pharmacological evidence in the literature. To address this knowledge gap, we aimed to examine the efficacy of a hypnotic drug, suvorexant, as a therapeutic agent for the treatment of delirium. METHODS: Fifty-seven patients were targeted. Of the 57 patients, 39 were in the subolexant group, 17 in the antipsychotic group, and 1 was taking antidepressants. The Delirium Rating Scale-Revised 98 was used to evaluate the symptoms of delirium before and 3 and 7 days after drug administration. In addition, the medical history, occurrence of adverse effects, white blood cell count, and C-reactive protein level of participants were examined. RESULTS: Both drugs exhibited therapeutic effects on delirium, but suvorexant had a more pronounced effect. Furthermore, the suvorexant group exhibited decreased levels of C-reactive protein, suggesting an anti-inflammatory effect. Suvorexant seems to improve the symptoms of inflammation-related delirium without any serious adverse effects, suggesting that it can be explored as a safe treatment option for clinical use in future studies. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings will be relevant for physicians interested in learning about new pharmacological treatment options and researchers interested in validating our results.

ZnO Nanorod-Based Non-Enzymatic Optical Glucose Biosensor.

The highly sensitive, interference-free and non-enzymatic optical sensing of glucose has been made possible for the first time using the hydrothermally synthesized ZnO nanorods. The UV irradiation of glucose-treated ZnO nanorods decomposes glucose into hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) and gluconic acid by UV oxidation. The ZnO nanorods play the role of a catalyst similar to the oxidase used in the enzymatic glucose sensors. The photoluminescence (PL) intensity of the near-band edge emission of the ZnO nanorods linearly decreased with the increased concentration of H2O2. Therefore, the glucose concentration is monitored over the wide range of 0.5-30 mM, corresponding to 9-540 mg/dL. The concentration range of the linear region in the calibration curve is suitable for its clinical use as a glucose sensor, because the glucose concentration of human serum is typically in the range of 80-120 mg/dL. In addition, the optical glucose sensor made of the ZnO nanorods is free from interference by bovin serum albumin, ascorbic acid or uric acid, which are also present in human blood. The non-enzymatic ZnO-nanorod sensor has been demonstrated with human serum samples from both normal persons and diabetic patients. There is a good agreement between the glucose concentrations measured by the PL quenching and standard clinical methods.