Running a drug information system on a scanty budget.

The Department of Pharmacology at the University of Cape Town has established an inexpensive but effective drug information system. This ia a manual system, sufficiently flexible to be developed as a sophisticated tool capable of serving the needs of academic medicine, medical administrators and drug regulatory authorities, while in its most simple form it may be used as a reliable patient-orientated service for hospitals and general practitioners, including those in isolated and underdeveloped area. The system could be transferred to a computer with relative ease.

Kinetics of somatostatin inhibition of pentagastrin-stimualted gastric acid secretion.

Dogs with gastric fistulae and denervated gastric pouches received graded doses of pentagastrin with and without a background infusion of somatostatin (1 microgram kg-1 h-1). Similarly, graded doses of somatostatin (0.25, 0.5, 1, 2 and 4 microgram kg-1 h-1) were infused after a steady state gastric secretion had been achieved with pentagastrin (1.5 microgram kg-1 h-1), about twice the dose required to produce half maximal (D50) response. Somatostatin inhibited pentagastrin-stimulated gastric acid secretion with competitive inhibition kinetics, but its precise site of action remains uncertain. The minimum effective dose of somatostatin on a twice D50 dose of pentagastrin was 0.25 microgram kg-1 h-1.

Effect of histamine H1- and H2-receptor blockade on canine gastric acid secretion.

In dogs with gastric fistulae and Heidenhain pouches, inhibition of histamine-stimulated gastric acid secretion by the histamine H2-receptor antagonist metiamide is not increased by the addition of a histamine H1-receptor antagonist (mepyramine maleate). Under the conditions of this study there is no evidence for the presence of histamine H1-receptor sites on the gastric parietal cell.