oryzae RIB40 and A. oryzae strain S1, respectively. The alignment was constructed using the ClustalW (http://www.ebi.ac.uk/clustalw/) and BOXSHADE selleck chem Pazopanib (http://www.ch.embnet.org/software/BOX_form.html) softwareClick here for additional data file.(49K, doc)AcknowledgmentsThis work was supported by the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (MOSTI), Malaysia, under the Grant UKM-MGI-NBD0014-2007, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada Grant STPGP 336896, and a scholarship from the Canadian Commonwealth Exchange program (Asia-Pacific). The authors would also like to thank Professor William J. Broughton for the helpful discussion and suggestions for improving the paper.
The 2008 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey indicates that 68% of the US adult population is overweight [1].

Overweight men and women have a higher number of hospital admissions compared to normal weight persons [2, 3]. With the increased number of admissions, clinicians are encountering new management challenges when providing care for these patients. Prescribing appropriate doses of medications such as opioids, anticoagulants, thrombolytics, anti-infectives, cardiac agents, corticosteroids, anticonvulsants, neuromuscular blocking agents, and sedatives in this overweight population is challenging since weight-based dosing is necessary and limited data addressing optimal dosages are available [4�C8].Clinicians, in particular pharmacists, rely on interpreting the pharmacokinetic properties of drugs requiring weight-based dosing to estimate the correct dosages when specific dosage recommendations are lacking [4�C9].

Inappropriate dosing is a concern due to the possibility of therapeutic failure from underdosing and adverse drug reactions (ADRs) associated with overdosing. Interestingly, many of the drugs requiring weight-based dosing are the same drugs on the List of High-Alert Medications published by the Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP) [10]. High-alert medications are drugs with a heightened risk of causing significant patient harm when used in error. Inappropriate dosages of weight-based drugs are considered a medication error that could contribute to patient harm.The purpose of this evaluation was to identify ��real-world�� dose ranges of high-risk medications administered via continuous infusion requiring weight-based dosing used in overweight populations and establish a foundation for standardized, institution-specific dosing guidelines for these patients.

2. MethodsThis was a prospective, multicenter, observational study. Participating sites were the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit (CICU) and Medical Intensive Care Unit (MICU) of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) Presbyterian Hospital (Pittsburgh, PA); the MICU of Kingsbrook GSK-3 Jewish Medical Center (Brooklyn, NY); and the CICU of Banner Good Samaritan Medical Center (Phoenix, AZ).