Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Even more on grapefruit juice

Ok, this is it. One last word on grapefruit juice. As both JLowe at Impact Analysis and my sister who actually reads the Wall Street Journal just informed me, grapefruit juice is now being pharmacueticalized if there is such a word. That is, someone's finally decided to capitalize the inhibitory potential of grapefruit juice extracts.

You can read a more detailed analysis at Terra Sigillata who suggests that trying to boost drug activity (and minimize dose) may be asking for trouble.
But then, as the WSJ article suggests there are some cases where boosting the efficacy of a poorly absorbed drug might be advantageous.

My take - after all this discussion of drug interactions - is why add yet another drug (unless absolutely necessary) when it's clear as Terra suggests that we're not only looking at combining drugs but also interindividual differences in how each body handles drugs - which depends on many factors including genetics, nutrition, gender, age, etc.

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