Hey all, welcome back to the real-life pharmacology podcast. I'm your host,

pharmacist Sarah Christensen. Thank you so much for listening today. As always, go sign up at

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All right.

Let's get into the drug of the day today.

And that is buprenorphin naloxone.

Many of you may know it by the brand name Suboxone.

And this is classified as a medication used for opioid use disorder.

It is two medications, to be clear.

Buprenorphin is a partial opioid agonist, and naloxone is an opioid antagonist.

So let's start with buprenorphin a little bit.

So this medication, being a partial opioid agonist has affinity for opioid receptors and activates them to a certain

extent. But it doesn't activate them to the extent of a full opioid agonists, such as morphine,

fentanyl, heroin, and other drugs like that.

So why this is used in opioid use disorder is because it has strong binding affinity for

those receptors, and it helps prevent full agonists from binding them and activating the receptors more fully.

The naloxone piece of it competes and doesn't allow other opioids to bind those

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