Pharmaceutical Regulatory Affairs: Open Access

Introduction: The private healthcare facilities and services act and regulations had been gazette in 2006. This act contains seven areas, which evaluates compliancy among clinics to these areas. Hence, it posed as a safety indicator to the act and regulations.

Methodology: A cross-sectional study was done among the private healthcare medical clinics in an urban state in Malaysia. A convenience sampling among 515 clinics were done whereby direct observation and inspection were according to the domains in the act.

Results: Among the 515 private healthcare clinics studied, only 45.0% were categorized as having good compliance, 31.8% moderately compliance and 23.1% as poor compliance level. There were significant associations between level of compliance with owner’s ethnicity (Malays), place of graduation (local graduates) and years of working experience (shorter years of service).

Conclusion: The compliance level among the private primary care providers have place for improvement. While determinants are owners ethnicity, graduated local or abroad and years of services. Regular scheduled inspection and enforcement by state managers are to instill provider’s compliance to new Act, especially on areas of emergency services to the community.

The cosmetic industry has been expanding rapidly in both developed and developing countries. The cosmetics market in Asia seems to be one of the fastest growing markets. The market value of the Asia Pacific has increased to more than US$70 billion, which is the second highest market after the Western European market. As reported in 2013, Malaysian spent about US$407 million on cosmetics and toiletries products and this demand was mainly met by imports. The skin care products are the main driver of the cosmetics markets, which represent value of US$229 million followed by eye color cosmetics with value of US$20.6 million. In 2013, Malaysia imported about US$295 million worth of cosmetics and toiletries and the top three importing countries are the United States, Japan and Thailand. It is found that Malaysian consumers’ interest was influenced by heavy advertising, marketing and growing prosperity that increased their interest in premium brands, and they prefer to use imported cosmetics products. The more recent in the Malaysian market trade is the emerging of halal cosmetics which will be attraction for the country’s Muslim customers.

Pharmacies are important sites for accessing medication use, promoting rational use of medicines and educating the community. The study aimed to investigate the retail market of drugs in pharmacies and drugstores in the Brazilian Federal District and to better understand about this scenario evaluated some aspects and used indicators. Information was extracted from the database of the Regional Pharmacy Board of the FD covering the period from 2000 to 2012. The numbers of drugstores and compounding pharmacies increased by 353.72% and 138%, respectively, during the period and most have opened than closed. The drugstore per capita ratio, which was 1/8,044 in 2000, is now 1/2,680 in 2010. Moreover, these facilities are now concentrated in areas with higher incomes and greater economic activity. In 2012, 32.5% of drugstores and 79% of compounding pharmacies were identified as belonging to pharmacists, and only the minority of the establishments was registered as a pharmacy chain. The main violations of pharmaceutical establishments detected by the Board were the absence or lack of a pharmacist and lack of legal registration. It was concluded that there was a great expansion of the pharmaceutical retail market in the Federal District of Brazil. Increasing in the number of establishment was higher than the population growth and the data suggest that the concentration of properties is related to the population purchasing power.

It is becoming increasingly evident that mitochondria dysfunction plays an important role in pathogenesis of Huntington’s disease (HD). However, the underlying mechanism is still needs to be explained. The crucial aspect of the explanation is to indicate the upstream events in mitochondria dysfunction that could contribute to HD. In the review we propose the defect of voltage-dependent anion-selective channel (VDAC), as a causative event in HDrelated mitochondria dysfunction. Thus, we propose to consider VDAC as a crucial element in HD etiology and consequently as a reasonable target for therapeutic interventions in HD, based on developing novel therapeutic strategies eliminating mitochondria dysfunction.