Preparing Tomorrow's Pharmacists: Should All Institutional Pharmacists Be Willing and Able to Train Pharmacy...

Pharmaceutical poisoning can occur through various channels, impacting an estimated 2 million hospitalized patients in the U.S. annually with serious adverse drug responses. These scenarios encompass both therapeutic uses, such as drug toxicity, where even standard dosages can lead to severe central nervous system depression, and non-therapeutic exposures, including accidental ingestion by children, and environmental and occupational exposures.Unintentional poisonings often involve exploratory...

Designing a dosage regimen, which refers to the manner of drug administration, is a complex process involving the selection of drug dose, route, and frequency. This process is underpinned by pharmacokinetic parameters derived from tests and population averages. These parameters are then tailored to patient-specific variables such as diagnosis, demographics, and allergy status. Once therapy commences, therapeutic response monitoring is critical and achieved through clinical and physical...

Drug distribution in the pediatric population exhibits unique challenges and considerations due to the physiological differences between children, particularly neonates and infants, and adults. A crucial aspect of pediatric pharmacology is understanding how these differences impact the pharmacokinetics of various drugs, necessitating age-specific dosing strategies to ensure efficacy and safety.Neonates and infants have a higher total body water content, ~75%–90% of their body weight,...

A drug's nonlinear kinetics can be influenced by a diverse range of transporter proteins that serve as crucial players in drug distribution. These transporters, found within cells, can enhance or reduce local drug concentrations by facilitating the influx or efflux of drugs. For instance, the expression of xenobiotic transporters can be influenced by factors such as age and gender, potentially impacting the linearity of drug response.
Polymorphisms occurring in drug transporters can alter...

Individualization in dosing regimens is the customization of medication doses for individual patients. Its necessity arises from the goal of maximizing therapeutic benefits while minimizing risks. This approach is pivotal because human responses to drugs can vary widely; what is effective for one person may be inadequate or excessive for another. Interpatient (intersubject) variability refers to differences in drug responses between individuals, while intrapatient (intrasubject) variability...

The empirical approach to drug therapy optimization relies on correlating pharmacological response with administered dosage. Such an approach can be costly, time-consuming, and often yields poor correlation due to variables like formulation factors and drug elimination characteristics. A more precise approach correlates response with plasma drug concentration or the amount of drug in the body, rather than dosage. This is achieved through pharmacokinetic-pharmacodynamic (PK/PD) modeling, which...