Does Alcohol Able to Change Pharmacokinetics of Drugs in Alcoholic People?
Author(s): Salar Masoomzadeh and Yousef Javadzadeh*
Abstract
Introduction: Alcohol is a commonly used drink worldwide. Its consumption increases after addiction as a result of long-term regular heavy drinking; heavy alcohol intakes can cause fatal injuries affecting the brain, the heart and directly affect the enzymes in the body, interfering with the pharmacokinetics of the drugs sharing the same enzyme for metabolism, and may reduce or increase the effectiveness of the drugs; these changes can occur due to different reasons like the change in the absorption of the drug, distribution, metabolism or excretion, and elimination. Using ethanol (EA) along with medications can cause changes in alcohol metabolism too so it may cause alcohol toxicity. The current study aims
to review the recently available data about these topics to discuss the ethanol-drugs reaction.
Methods: Related articles using “Pubmed,” “Google Scholar,” “Sciencedirect,” and “Elsevier” databases were handpicked and studied, then the summarized and extracted data were classified into several sections and presented as follows.
Results: Our analysis of several articles regarding this subject suggested that ethanol alters the pharmacokinetics of other drugs by changing therate and extent of absorption, for instance, resulting in therapeutic disease processes or even complicating the patient’s condition;Furthermore, using ethanol in drug dosage form itself can positively affect
drug absorbance in oral and local usages.
Conclusion: Chronic usage of alcohol as a daily drink makes serious body damages because of the changes in liver enzymes, gastric drug absorbance, kidneys function and etc. so alcohol necessarily damages the life (in healthy people it induces many kinds of diseases and in drug usage patients it makes the treatment process difficult)