Uppsala University

About: Uppsala University is a education organization based out in Uppsala, Sweden. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Gene. The organization has 36485 authors who have published 107509 publications receiving 4220668 citations. The organization is also known as: Uppsala universitet & uu.se.

Pharmacodynamics and pharmacokinetics of the HMG-CoA reductase inhibitors. Similarities and differences.

Abstract: Hypercholesterolaemia plays a crucial role in the development of atherosclerotic diseases in general and coronary heart disease in particular. The risk of progression of the atherosclerotic process to coronary heart disease increases progressively with increasing levels of total serum cholesterol or low density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol at both the individual and the population level. The statins are reversible inhibitors of the microsomal enzyme HMG-CoA reductase, which converts HMG-CoAto mevalonate. This is an early rate-limiting step in cholesterol biosynthesis. Inhibition of HMG-CoA reductase by statins decreases intracellular cholesterol biosynthesis, which then leads to transcriptionally upregulated production of microsomal HMG-CoA reductase and cell surface LDL receptors. Subsequently, additional cholesterol is provided to the cell by de novo synthesis and by receptor-mediated uptake of LDL-cholesterol from the blood. This resets intracellular cholesterol homeostasis in extrahepatic tissues, but has little effect on the overall cholesterol balance. There are no simple methods to investigate the concentration-dependent inhibition of HMG-CoA reductase in human pharmacodynamic studies. The main clinical variable is plasma LDL-cholesterol, which takes 4 to 6 weeks to show a reduction after the start of statin treatment. Consequently, a dose-effect rather than a concentration-effect relationship is more appropriate to use in describing the pharmacodynamics. Fluvastatin, lovastatin, pravastatin and simvastatin have similar pharmacodynamic properties; all can reduce LDL-cholesterol by 20 to 35%, a reduction which has been shown to achieve decreases of 30 to 35% in major cardiovascular outcomes. Simvastatin has this effect at doses of about half those of the other 3 statins. The liver is the target organ for the statins, since it is the major site of cholesterol biosynthesis, lipoprotein production and LDLcatabolism. However, cholesterol biosynthesis in extrahepatic tissues is necessary for normal cell function. The adverse effects of HMG-reductase inhibitors during long term treatment may depend in part upon the degree to which they act in extrahepatic tissues. Therefore, pharmacokinetic factors such as hepatic extraction and systemic exposure to active compound(s) may be clinically important when comparing the statins. Different degrees of liver selectivity have been claimed for the HMG-CoA reductase inhibitors. However, the literature contains confusing data concerning the degree of liver versus tissue selectivity. Human pharmacokinetic data are poor and incomplete, especially for lovastatin and simvastatin, and it is clear that any conclusion on tissue selectivity is dependent upon the choice of experimental model. However, the drugs do differ in some important aspects concerning the degree of metabolism and the number of active and inactive metabolites. The rather extensive metabolism by different cytochrome P450 isoforms also makes it difficult to characterise these drugs regarding tissue selectivity unless all metabolites are well characterised. The effective elimination half-lives of the hydroxy acid forms of the 4 statins are 0.7 to 3.0 hours. Protein binding is similar (>90%) for fluvastatin, lovastatin and simvastatin, but it is only 50% for pravastatin. The best characterised statins from a clinical pharmacokinetic standpoint are fluvastatin and pravastatin. The major difference between these 2 compounds is the higher liver extraction of fluvastatin during the absorption phase compared with pravastatin (67 versus 45%, respectively, in the same dose range). Estimates of liver extraction in humans for lovastatin and simvastatin are poorly reported, which makes a direct comparison difficult.

Molecular Spectroscopy by Means of ESCA III. Carbon compounds

Abstract: Carbon 1s energies are measured by ESCA for a series of aliphatic saturated compounds, carbonyl compounds, and some aromatic compounds. For convenient use in chemical structure analysis the binding energy shifts are correlated with a charge parameter obtained from electronegativity considerations. The shifts are also analyzed in terms of group shifts from which group electronegativities are derived. A comparison is made between the shifts in solid and gaseous samples and it is shown that solid state effects are small for non-ionic compounds. The observed shifts are then compared with results of semi-empirical and ab initio molecular orbital calculations on free molecules. The theoretical calculations are simplified by use of an electrostatic potential model.

Instrumental Variable Methods for System Identification

Abstract: This paper gives a tutorial overview of instrumental variable methods. Comparisons are made to the least-squares method. An analysis including consistency and asymptotic distribution of the parameter estimates is included.

Natural Orbitals in the Quantum Theory of Two-Electron Systems

Abstract: The wave functions for the singlet and triplet states of a two-electron system in a given nuclear framework are investigated as superpositions of configurations and are shown to be transformationally equivalent to quadratic forms having certain ranks and signatures. By introducing the "natural orbitals" diagonalizing the generalized first-order density matrix, the total wave functions may also be brought to principal form. If the basis contains $M$ one-electron functions, the singlet and triplet wave functions contain respectively $\frac{M(M+1)}{2}$ and $\frac{M(M\ensuremath{-}1)}{2}$ configurations, but the transformation to natural orbitals reduces the number of terms to $M$ and [$\frac{M}{2}$], respectively. The natural expansion having the best convergence is also characterized by another important extremum property. The approximate wave function of rank $r$ having the smallest quadratic deviation from the exact eigenfunction is obtained by interrupting the natural expansion of the eigenfunction after $r$ terms and renormalizing the result. For the singlet state, the wave function of rank two and signature zero has a special importance as giving a simple extension of the visual one-electron picture to include a large part of the correlation effects. The theory is illustrated by some results on helium obtained by using radial configuration interaction.