Z-drug

Z-drugs are a group of nonbenzodiazepine drugs with effects similar to benzodiazepines, which are used in the treatment of insomnia, and most of whose names start with the letter "Z". Some Z-drugs may have advantages over benzodiazepines. Benzodiazepines actually worsen sleep architecture, whereas the Z-drug zaleplon (Sonata) may have less or no disruption of sleep architecture.

History

Z-drugs emerged in the last years of the 1980s and early 1990s, with zopiclone (Imovane) approved by the British National Health Service as early as 1989, quickly followed by Sanofi with zolpidem (Ambien). By 1999, King Pharmaceuticals had finalized approval with the American Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to market zaleplon (Sonata, Starnoc) across the US. In 2005, the FDA approved eszopiclone (Lunesta) the (S)-enantiomer of zopiclone. That same year, 2005, the FDA finalized approval for Ambien CR, or extended-release zolpidem. Most recently, in 2012 the FDA approved Intermezzo, which still utilizes zolpidem as its active ingredient, but is marketed for middle-of-the-night insomnia, available in doses only half of the strength of immediate-release Ambien to avoid residual next-day sedation.

Drug

A drug is any substance other than food, that when inhaled, injected, smoked, consumed, absorbed via a patch on the skin or dissolved under the tongue causes a physiological change in the body.

In pharmacology, a pharmaceutical drug or medicine, is a chemical substance used to treat, cure, prevent, diagnose a disease or promote well-being. Traditionally drugs were obtained through extraction from medicinal plants, but more recently also by organic synthesis. Pharmaceutical drugs may be used for a limited duration, or on a regular basis for chronic disorders.

Pharmaceutical drugs are often classified into drug classes—groups of related drugs that have similar chemical structures, the same mechanism of action (binding to the same biological target), a related mode of action, and that are used to treat the same disease. The Anatomical Therapeutic Chemical Classification System (ATC), the most widely used drug classification system, assigns drugs a unique ATC code, which is an alphanumeric code that assigns it to specific drug classes within the ATC system. Another major classification system is the Biopharmaceutics Classification System. This classifies drugs according to their solubility and permeability or absorption properties.

Shithead (card game)

Shithead (also known as Karma, Palace, Shed, Three Card Game and by many other names) is a card game similar to the Finnish game Paskahousu. In the game the object is to lose all of one's cards, with the last player to do so being the "shithead", who must deal the next game and may be subject to some minor forfeit of the group's choice, such as fetching the next round of drinks.

The game, and variations of it, is popular in many countries amongst backpackers, and as a result is widespread. Although the basic structure of the game generally remains constant there are often regional variations of the game's original rules.

Rules

There are many variations of the rules, and there is no universally accepted set. A common set of rules is listed here.

Setup

From a standard, shuffled deck of 52 cards, each player is dealt three face-down cards in a row. Players are not allowed to see or change these cards. On top of the face-down cards, they are dealt the same number of face-up cards. Three cards are again dealt to each player (face down), and this becomes the player's hand.

Drugs (journal)

Drugs is a peer-reviewed medical journal published by Adis International (Springer Science + Business Media) that covers topics in drugs and therapeutics. Besides research articles, the journal also publishes "Adis Drug Evaluations and Profiles", evidence-based, single-agent reviews.

Abstracting and indexing

Drugs is abstracted and indexed in:

According to the Journal Citation Reports it received an impact factor of 4.343, ranking it 9th out of 87 journals in the category "Toxicology" and ranking it 32nd out of 254 journals in the category "Pharmacology & Pharmacy"

References

External links