Development and validation of a reversed‐phase HPLC method for CYP1A2 phenotyping by use of a caffeine metabolite ratio in saliva

CYP1A2 is important for metabolizing various clinically used drugs. Phenotyping of CYP1A2 may prove helpful for drug individualization therapy. Several HPLC methods have been developed for quantification of caffeine metabolites in plasma and urine. Aim of the present study was to develop a valid and simple HPLC method for evaluating CYP1A2 activity during exposure in xenobiotics by the use of human saliva. Caffeine and paraxanthine were isolated from saliva by liquid‐liquid extraction (chlorophorm/isopropanol 85/15v/v). Extracts were analyzed by reversed‐phase HPLC on a C₁₈ column with mobile phase 0.1% acetic acid/methanol/acetonitrile (80/20/2 v/v) and detected at 273nm. Caffeine and paraxanthine elution times were <13min with no interferences from impurities or caffeine metabolites. Detector response was linear (0.10–8.00µg/ml, R²>0.99), recovery was >93% and bias <4.47%. Intra‐ and inter‐day precision was <5.14% (n=6). The limit of quantitation was 0.10µg/ml and the limit of detection was 0.018±0.002µg/mL for paraxanthine and 0.032±0.002µg/ml for caffeine. Paraxanthine/caffeine ratio of 34 healthy volunteers was significantly higher in smokers (p<0.001). Saliva paraxanthine/caffeine ratios and urine metabolite ratios were highly correlated (r=0.85, p<0.001). The method can be used for the monitoring of CYP1A2 activity in clinical practice and in studies relevant to exposure to environmental and pharmacological xenobiotics. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Wavelet Collocation Methods for a First Kind Boundary Integral Equation in Acoustic Scattering

In this paper we consider a wavelet algorithm for the piecewise constant collocation method applied to the boundary element solution of a first kind integral equation arising in acoustic scattering. The conventional stiffness matrix is transformed into the corresponding matrix with respect to wavelet bases, and it is approximated by a compressed matrix. Finally, the stiffness matrix is multiplied by diagonal preconditioners such that the resulting matrix of the system of linear equations is well conditioned and sparse. Using this matrix, the boundary integral equation can be solved effectively.     

Efficient Collocation Schemes for Singular Boundary Value Problems

We discuss an error estimation procedure for the global error of collocation schemes applied to solve singular boundary value problems with a singularity of the first kind. This a posteriori estimate of the global error was proposed by Stetter in 1978 and is based on the idea of Defect Correction, originally due to Zadunaisky. Here, we present a new, carefully designed modification of this error estimate which not only results in less computational work but also appears to perform satisfactorily for singular problems. We give a full analytical justification for the asymptotical correctness of the error estimate when it is applied to a general nonlinear regular problem. For the singular case, we are presently only able to provide computational evidence for the full convergence order, the related analysis is still work in progress. This global estimate is the basis for a grid selection routine in which the grid is modified with the aim to equidistribute the global error. This procedure yields meshes suitable for an efficient numerical solution. Most importantly, we observe that the grid is refined in a way reflecting only the behavior of the solution and remains unaffected by the unsmooth direction field close to the singular point.     

On the Moments of Overflow and Freed Carried Traffic for the GI/M/C/0 System

In circuit-switched networks call streams are characterized by their mean and peakedness (two-moment method). The GI/M/C/0 system is used to model a single link, where the GI-stream is determined by fitting moments appropriately. For the moments of the overflow traffic of a GI/M/C/0 system there are efficient numerical algorithms available. However, for the moments of the freed carried traffic, defined as the moments of a virtual link of infinite capacity to which the process of calls accepted by the link (carried arrival process) is virtually directed and where the virtual calls get fresh exponential i.i.d. holding times, only complex numerical algorithms are available. This is the reason why the concept of the freed carried traffic is not used. The main result of this paper is a numerically stable and efficient algorithm for computing the moments of freed carried traffic, in particular an explicit formula for its peakedness. This result offers a unified handling of both overflow and carried traffics in networks. Furthermore, some refined characteristics for the overflow and freed carried streams are derived.