The standard dose of some medications are too high and dangerous for the patients, where some patients respond the exact opposite and show that the standard dose is too low to produce beneficial effects. It would seem to be a simple case of age, gender, or genetic differences to explain the individual variability in response to the drugs.
A study at the University of Kansas is reporting that variations in the body's production of hydrogen peroxide, which is believed to serve as a signaling molecule at low levels, can affect the accumulation of drugs inside our cells.
Oxidative stress, an increase in hydrogen peroxide levels, may have an increased response to a given dosage of a drug. This seems to show that it is in our best interest for physicians to provide more individualized dosing of drugs.
Hydrogen peroxide effects could be especially important in therapeutic drugs such as aminophylline, carbamazepine, lithium, carbonate, phenytoin, theophylline and warfarin. The researchers think that small changes in the doses of these drugs could cause either subtherapeutic or toxic results.
1. I was diagnosted with stage three large cell lung cancer the same time as Benny Parsons in July.My last P.E.T. scan was "normal". My Rad. Doc told me that he could do nothing and my Med. Doc said that she had some new thing to try. It worked so far. Why did they do major rads to Benny?
Posted at 9:34PM on Jan 16th 2007 by Jim Blackman