New eyes on old drugs

As individuals age, their body's physiology evolves, affecting drug pharmacokinetics. The most apparent changes occur in the gastrointestinal tract, where an increase in gastric pH, a delay in gastric emptying, and a reduction in gastrointestinal motility are observed. Remarkably, these changes do not substantially modify the absorption of orally administered drugs, particularly those absorbed via passive diffusion.Transdermal drug delivery emerges as a highly viable method for older adults due...

Synergism is a useful mechanism where combining two or more drugs is more effective than each constituent used alone. Such combinations are also called supra-additive interactions. The drugs collectively enhance the final therapeutic effect by acting on different targets. Another advantage is that the low dose of each constituent drug is sufficient to achieve the desired effect. This helps reduce the duration of therapy and lower the adverse effects of these drugs.
Such synergistic combinations...

Post-approval, manufacturers may modify an approved new or generic drug product. Such modifications can encompass alterations in the Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient (API), manufacturing process, formulation, batch size, manufacturing site, and container closure system (FDA Guidance for Industry, April 2004). Often, a drug product may undergo multiple changes.These modifications require careful evaluation to determine their potential impact on the drug product's identity, strength, quality,...

Prescription drugs require a prescription from a medical practitioner and can only be obtained from a pharmacy. They have many applications, including treating pain, anxiety, and hypertension.
The misuse and addiction to prescription drugs is a growing problem that can affect people of all age groups, specifically teenagers. This can happen when prescription medications are used in ways not intended by the prescriber, such as taking someone else's prescription or using medication for...

The combined effects of drugs can result in various interactions, of which an important type is antagonism. Antagonism is a mechanism where one drug inhibits or counteracts the effects of another drug. Antagonism can occur through various means, including receptor binding, allosteric modulation, functional interaction, chemical reactions, and pharmacokinetic processes.
The most common type is receptor antagonism, where one drug acts as an antagonist to block the effects of another drug by...

Age-related pharmacokinetic changes are extensively documented, but understanding age-related pharmacodynamic alterations is relatively limited. This knowledge gap can be partly attributed to the complexity of developing appropriate measures of drug responses compared to bioanalytical methods for determining drug concentrations.Most information regarding age-related differences in human pharmacodynamics originates from cross-sectional studies. However, these studies assume that observed mean...