Hey all, welcome back to the Real Life Pharmacology podcast. I'm your host, pharmacist, Eric Christensen.

Thank you so much for listening today. As always, go get your free 31-page PDF on the top 200 drugs.

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Let's get into the drug of the day today, and that is Alaskeran.

Brand name of this medication is Tecterna,

and this medication is classified as an anti-hypertensive,

so it's going to lower blood pressure,

and it's also classified as a renin inhibitor. So if you think about the renin angiotensin-elodosterone system, you'll recognize

that Alaskirin being a renin inhibitor is also going to work on that pathway.

So mechanistically, by this drug, essentially reducing the activity of renin,

that's going to ultimately block the conversion of angiotensinogen to angiotensin 1, and then so on and so forth.

So because of that blocking, that's going to ultimately lead to a reduction in blood pressure

due to vasodilation. Remember, angiotensin 2 is the most potent vasoconstrictor,

and that's further down that line in that cascade of the formation of different metabolites

of inalterations to angiotensinogen and angiotensin 1. So again, reducing that reenactivity ultimately blocks that conversion of angiotensin

gen to angiotensin 1, which is in that pathway of increasing angiotensin 2. So going to lead to

vasodilation and obviously lowering of blood pressure. This medication is typically dosed once a day, so that is definitely an advantage.

And this medication is typically more expensive than your traditional ACE inhibitors and

arms and things of that nature, which lends to an important education point.

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