Hey all, Eric Christensen here with the Real Life Pharmacology podcast.

Today we're going to cover bupropion.

Brand name is well butrin.

Also historically, you may have heard the brand name Zyban used as well.

The mechanism of action of buproprion is really not well understood. However, there's definitely a thought or belief that it's got activity on dopamine as well as norepinephrine within the brain.

So with that, if we think about other historic, classical antidepressants,

most antidepressants really target serotonin.

So we've got the SSRIs, the SNRIs, and medications like that.

Most of them, like I mentioned, target that serotonin.

So this is kind of a unique thing with buproprion,

where we don't feel that it targets serotonin like some of those other drugs.

So in clinical practice, I've definitely seen bupropion added on to another antidepressant for

augmentation to help manage that depression.

So obviously depression, as I'm talking about it, is one of the common uses of this

medication.

I would say one of the most common uses. The second one that I see

most common, probably in clinical practice, is smoking cessation. And I do want to remind you as you're

working with patients, whatever your role is.

Buproprone, a lot like the other antidepressants, takes a while to work.

And in both depression and smoking cessation, it's not going to be an immediate effect. So definitely at least, you know, a week or two to really start to begin an onset of potential benefit and,

you know, weeks thereafter, hopefully ramping up that benefit. But again, not going to work

in most situations within, you know, three to five to seven days. It's just not going to start

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