Multimodal imaging of drug and excipients in rat lungs following an inhaled administration of controlled-release drug laden PLGA microparticles.

Controlled-release formulations, in the form of micro- or nanoparticles, are increasingly attractive to the pharmaceutical industry for drug delivery. For respiratory illnesses, controlled-release microparticle formulations provide an opportunity to deliver a higher percentage of an inhaled medicament dose to the lung, thus potentially reducing the therapeutic dose, frequency of dosing, and minimising side-effects. We describe the use of a multimodal approach consisting of MALDI MS imaging, 3D depth profiling TOF-SIMS analysis, and histopathology to monitor the distribution of drug and excipients in sections taken from excised rat lungs following an inhaled administration of drug-laden microparticles. Following a single dose, the administered drug was detected in the lung via both MALDI MS and TOF-SIMS over a range of time points. Both imaging techniques enabled the characterisation of the distribution and retention of drug particles and identified differences in the capabilities of both imaging modalities. Histochemical staining of consecutive sections was used to provide biological context to the findings and will also be discussed in this presentation. We demonstrate how this multimodal approach could be used to help increase our understanding of the use of controlled release microparticles.

Identifying the poorest older Americans.

OBJECTIVES: Public policies target a subset of the population defined as poor or needy, but rarely are people poor or needy in the same way. This is particularly true among older adults. This study investigates poverty among older adults in order to identify who among them is financially worst off. METHODS: We use 20 years of data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey to examine the income and consumption of older Americans. RESULTS: The poverty rate is cut in fourth if both income and consumption are used to define poverty. Those most likely to be poor defined by only income but not poor defined by income and consumption together are married, White, and homeowners and have a high school diploma or higher. The income poor alone display sufficient assets to raise consumption above poverty thresholds, whereas the consumption poor are shown to have income just above the poverty threshold and few assets. DISCUSSION: The poorest among the older population are those who are income and consumption poor. Understanding the nature of this double poverty population is important in measuring the success of future public policies to reduce poverty among this group.

No place like home: older adults and their housing.

OBJECTIVES: The home is both older Americans' largest asset and their largest consumption good. This article employs new data on the consumption and assets of older Americans to investigate what role the home plays in the economic lives of older adults. METHODS: We used 20 years of data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey to examine the asset and consumption trends of four cohorts of older Americans. We compared the data with other survey results. RESULTS: Older Americans' homeownership rates were stable until age 80. The homes were increasingly mortgage free; home equity increased with age, and relatively few older adults took out home equity loans or reverse annuity mortgages. Housing consumption flows increased with age; nonhousing consumption flows declined after age 60 at a rate of approximately 1.4% per year. DISCUSSION: The results suggest that the consumption of cohorts of older Americans does not decrease dramatically over a 20-year period and that they are also not converting their housing assets into other types of income or consumption, at least up to age 80. A number of reasons, including the bequest motive and the life cycle hypothesis, might explain this behavior.