Disposing of Unused Medications: Have We Been Doing It All Wrong?

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...

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...

The liver plays a pivotal role in eliminating drugs and their metabolites, primarily through a process known as biliary excretion. This process involves the hepatocytes, the primary cells in the liver that generate bile. A range of transporters actively expels polar drugs or hydrophilic drug metabolites into the bile, which transports the drugs and metabolites into the small intestine. From here, they are eventually expelled from the body through feces. In some instances, the original drug or a...

Poison can be effectively removed from the gastrointestinal (GI) tract through various decontamination procedures.
Antidotes serve a crucial role in counteracting the effects of poison by inhibiting enzymes responsible for producing harmful drug metabolites. In some cases, these toxic metabolites can be neutralized by endogenous cosubstrates, which are maintained at specific concentrations to prevent interaction with cellular macromolecules and subsequent cell death.
Renal excretion is the...

Drug elimination involves many complex processes and does not necessarily differentiate between distribution and elimination. It is divided into two primary components: excretion and biotransformation.
Excretion refers to removing a drug from the body, either in its unchanged form or as its metabolites. Nonvolatile and polar drugs are primarily excreted through the kidneys, with other pathways including bile, sweat, saliva, and milk. Volatile drugs such as anesthetic gases are excreted via the...

Drug excretion involves various organs, including the liver, intestines, skin, and eyes. In the case of drugs or toxins, they can be actively secreted into bile by transporters in the hepatocyte's canalicular membrane. These substances enter the GI tract during digestion and may be reabsorbed into the body from the intestine. This process, known as enterohepatic recycling, can significantly prolong the presence and effects of a substance in the body. To interrupt this cycle, specific...