Gender differences in pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of psychotropics: focus on women

The animal literature provides many instances of gender differences in drug metabolism and/or response. However, there are inherent dangers in trying to generalize findings of either pharmacokinetic or pharmacodynamic gender differences to humans. The literature was searched for references to gender and pharmacokinetics of psychoactive drugs. Interest was primarily in whether sufficient data were available on humans to implicate a gender effect, given the large animal literature. There was a dearth of investigations to look for pertinent differences and many studies that examined gender differences appeared to do so incidentally. Some differences were identified that seemed hormonally influenced and age-related. The most compelling gender differences stem from data on research probes utilized to better understand psychiatric disease processes. The implications for women as psychoactive drug consumers are discussed.