An antibiotic is a type of antimicrobial substance active against bacteria, and widely used for the treatment and prevention of various bacterial infections. Antibiotics are the substance that are commonly produced by microorganism which act against other microorganisms. 1 According to the world health organization (WHO), more than 50% of medicines are incongruously prescribed, dispensed and utilised. Furthermore, around half of the patients take their medicines incorrectly. 2 The irrational use of medicine is an alarming situation in developing countries due to their weak healthcare systems where the monitoring mechanism for routine medicine use are often not properly developed. 3

Background The substantial and increasing use of medications escalating the risk of harm globally. The serious medication errors in hospital and community settings resulting from patient injury and death. Hence, a cross‐sectional study was aimed to analyse the prescribing and dispensing errors in the outpatient departments of a south Indian hospital. Materials and methods A prospective cross‐sectional study was carried out to evaluate the prescribing, and dispensing errors in outpatients who seek patient counseling at the tertiary care multispecialty hospital. The data were collected from various sources such as patient's prescriptions and dispensing records from the pharmacy. Results A total of 500 prescriptions were screened and identified 65.60% of prescriptions with at least any one type of medication errors. Out of 328 prescriptions, 96.04% were handwritten and 3.96% were computerised prescriptions. Among the 328 prescriptions with medication errors, 32.62% noticed prescribing errors, 37.80% with dispensing errors, and 29.58% with both prescribing and dispensing errors. Out of these 328 prescriptions, 74.09% prescriptions were found to have polypharmacy. Discussion Medication errors are serious problems in healthcare and can be a source of significant morbidity and mortality in healthcare settings. The present study showed that dispensing errors were the most common among the types of medication errors, in these particularly wrong directions were the most common types of errors. Conclusion This study concludes that the overall prevalence of medication errors was around 80%, but there were no life‐threatening events observed. A clinical pharmacist can play a major role in this situation appears to be a strong intervention and early detection and prevention of medication errors and thus can improve the quality of care to the patients.

Traditional medicine claims that various components of the Phoenix dactylifera (date plant) can be used to treat memory loss, fever, inflammation, loss of consciousness, and nerve disorders. The present study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of Phoenix dactylifera fruit extracts (PDF) against rat sickness behaviour caused by lipopolysaccharide (LPS) by assessing behavioural and biochemical parameters. PDF was prepared by extracting dry fruits of P. dactylifera with a methanol:water (4:1, v/v) mixture. The PDF was evaluated for phenolic and flavonoid content and HPLC analysis of quercetin estimation. Adult Wistar rats were treated with LPS, PDF + LPS and dexamethasone + LPS. Water and food intake, behavioural tests such as locomotor activity, tail suspension and forced swim tests were conducted. Furthermore, alanine transaminase (ALT) and aspartate transaminase (AST) were estimated in plasma and malondialdehyde (MDA), reduced glutathione (GSH), nitrite, tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) and interleukin-6 (IL-6), were estimated in the brain. PDF ameliorated LPS-induced sickness behaviour by reducing MDA, nitrite, IL-6, and TNF-α levels and improving GSH, behavioural alteration, water and food intake in the treated rats. In the plasma of the treated rats, PDF also decreased the levels of ALT and AST. The outcomes demonstrated the efficacy of PDF in reducing the sickness behaviour caused by LPS in rats. The authors believe that this study will provide the groundwork for future research to better understand the underlying mechanisms of action and therapeutic efficacy.

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Kandasamy et al.: Prescribing Pattern for NSAIDsAnalgesics, including nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, are a commonly prescribed group of drugs in clinical practice for the management of pain and inflammation. This study was carried out to evaluate the prescribing pattern for nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs in the tertiary care teaching hospital. A prospective cross sectional study was conducted in the orthopaedic department of a tertiary care teaching hospital from February to December 2017. The institutional ethical committee approved the study. Patients of both genders were included in the study. Patients treated with at least one nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug in the outpatient department of orthopaedics were included. The prescription was compared with World Health Organization drug prescribing indicators to compare selective and nonselective nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs associated with the treatment also concurrent prescription of gastro protective agents. The data collected was analysed by descriptive statistics. Chi-Square test was used to compare the difference between the two groups. A p value of <0.05 was considered significant. Out of 500 prescriptions included in the study, the total number of drugs prescribed was 1098, of which were nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. Based on the World Health Organization's drug use indicators, the average number of drugs per encounter was 2.19 % and the average number of nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drugs per encounter was 1.38 %. Out of all the nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs prescribed, 428 (62.20 %) were from National List of Essential Medicine India 2015 and 678 (98.5 %) nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs were prescribed by generic name. Among the study population, only 40 % of patients were prescribed Proton Pump Inhibitors along with nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. Proton Pump Inhibitors are effective in ulcer prophylaxis in their standard dose. The present study concluded that among cyclooxygenase-1 inhibitors, Diclofenac was the most commonly prescribed nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs from the national list of essential medicine. The most frequently prescribed cyclooxygenase-2 inhibitor in this study was Etoricoxib. The percentage of analgesic prescribed by generic name was excellent. However, the average number of drugs per prescription deviated from the World Health Organization's rational drug use indicator. The use of gastro protective agents needs to be rationalised with nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugsy.