P-glycoprotein: a focus on characterizing variability in cardiovascular pharmacotherapeutics

According to the report of Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality in 2008, drug-related adverse outcomes exceed 2.7 million events per year. Therefore, it is requisite to understand the etiologies of those unpleasant outcomes. Polypharmacy especially in the elderly is considered one of the major sources of drug-related side effects. The drug-related membrane transporters play an indispensable role in the pharmacokinetics, safety, and efficacy of the drugs. P-glycoprotein, also known as P-gp, is considered one of the core drug transporters in vivo. Since its discovery in 1976, P-gp gained a tremendous attention of researchers and clinicians. The core objective of this review is to highlight the clinical correlation between the P-gp and a number of cardiovascular drugs and to address the drug-drug interaction in case of using those cardiovascular drugs with P-gp-related drugs whether substrates, inhibitors, or inducers. Bearing in mind that P-gp is found in liver and intestine, as well as cytochrome P450, a strong association between the 2 systems is expected. Yet, plenty of the drugs that can behave as substrates to P-gp can act as substrates to CYP450 too. Consequently, probable drug-drug interaction can occur between drugs that work on both systems. In other words, whenever these classes of medications prescribed together cautious monitoring of drug's level and eventually dose adjustment might be necessary to avoid drug-drug interactions, failure of therapy, or drug toxicity; especially with the use of drugs that possess narrow therapeutic index like digoxin.