Development of a board game to assist pharmacists learning the potentially inappropriate medications in older people.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Pharmacists have been reported to have inadequate awareness about potentially inappropriate medications (PIMs) in older people. This warrants more efforts to enhance their familiarity and knowledge in this topic. A board game was developed based on the 2019 American Geriatrics Society (AGS) Beers Criteria to assist pharmacists learning the topic. EDUCATIONAL ACTIVITY AND SETTING: The board game is played using dice and pawns and involved players encounter questions on various aspects of PIMs in older people. Questions used in the board game were reviewed by a panel of experts. The board game exposed pharmacists to drug-drug and drug-disease/syndrome interactions. The board game was pilot tested among 16 pharmacists and played by a group of 34 pharmacists. Close- and open-ended feedback regarding the board game were sought in both sessions using a self-developed questionnaire. FINDINGS: All pharmacists in the pilot test (PT) and actual game (AG) sessions agreed that the board game is an innovative, useful, and interesting way to learn about PIMs in older people. All pharmacists in the PT session and a high majority of those in the AG session agreed that the board game increased their knowledge about PIMs in older people. The open-ended responses showed generally positive feedback. SUMMARY: The board game can be useful as an educational tool to supplement traditional teaching methods to assist pharmacists learning the PIMs in older people. Periodic review and relevant modifications of the board game content can be done to ensure its efficiency and relevance.

A virtual screening approach for identifying plants with anti H5N1 neuraminidase activity.

Recent outbreaks of highly pathogenic and occasional drug-resistant influenza strains have highlighted the need to develop novel anti-influenza therapeutics. Here, we report computational and experimental efforts to identify influenza neuraminidase inhibitors from among the 3000 natural compounds in the Malaysian-Plants Natural-Product (NADI) database. These 3000 compounds were first docked into the neuraminidase active site. The five plants with the largest number of top predicted ligands were selected for experimental evaluation. Twelve specific compounds isolated from these five plants were shown to inhibit neuraminidase, including two compounds with IC50 values less than 92 µM. Furthermore, four of the 12 isolated compounds had also been identified in the top 100 compounds from the virtual screen. Together, these results suggest an effective new approach for identifying bioactive plant species that will further the identification of new pharmacologically active compounds from diverse natural-product resources.

3-(2-Methyl-amino-1,3-thia-zol-4-yl)-2H-chromen-2-one.

In the title compound, C(13)H(10)N(2)O(2)S, the essentially planar 2H-chromene ring system [maximum deviation = 0.0297 (13) Å] and the thia-zole ring [maximum deviation = 0.0062 (11) Å] form a dihedral angle of 3.47 (5)°. In the crystal, N-H⋯N and C-H⋯O hydrogen bonds link the mol-ecules into two-dimensional networks parallel to the bc plane. C-H⋯π and π-π [centroid-centroid separation = 3.6796 (8) Å] inter-actions further stabilize the crystal structure.

3ß-Chloro-5α-cholestan-6-one.

The asymmetric unit of the title compound, C(27)H(45)ClO, consists of two crystallographically independent mol-ecules. In both mol-ecules, the three cyclo-hexane rings in the steroid fused-ring systems adopt chair conformations, while the cyclo-pentane ring adopts a half-chair conformation in one mol-ecule and an envelope conformation in the other. In the crystal, the mol-ecules are linked into a two-dimensional network by weak C-H⋯O hydrogen bonds. The crystal studied is a nonmerohedral twin with a refined ratio of twin components of 0.264 (3):0.736 (3).