Clonidine Pharmacology

Real Life Pharmacology - Pharmacology Education for Health Care Professionals

Eric Christianson, PharmD; Pharmacology Expert and Clinical Pharmacist

Education, Health & Fitness, Medicine

5 • 716 Ratings

🗓️ 22 February 2019

⏱️ 12 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Clonidine is classified as an antihypertensive. Clonidine pharmacology involves having agonist activity at central alpha 2 receptors. This leads to lower sympathetic outflow and a reduction in blood pressure.

Clonidine has numerous reported uses in addition to its antihypertensive effect. It can potentially be used for ADHD, menopausal type symptoms, and opioid withdrawal.

Clonidine has historically been on the Beers' list of drugs as it can cause some CNS side effects like sedation, dizziness, and rarely delirium.

Clonidine is unique in the antihypertensive class as it does have a patch formulation.

Because of the blood pressure lowering effect of clonidine, we have to be aware of patients who report dizziness. Monitoring is critical.

Clonidine can also lower heart rate and contribute to dry mouth. Keep an eye out for drugs that can have a cumulative effect on these symptoms.

Drugs like beta-blockers, non-DHP CCB's, and digoxin can all have a cumulative effect with clonidine and lower pulses. Monitoring is important.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey all, I'm Eric Christensen, your host of the Real Life Pharmacology podcast. Thanks for listening today.
0:08.5	Today I'm going to cover Clonidine, but first, you know, many of you ask how to reach out to you and that type of thing.
0:15.4	So LinkedIn is probably a great way to do that. I'm on LinkedIn fairly regularly. If you want to shoot me a
0:23.3	message there, that's certainly okay or connect. That's just fine as well. Check out real life
0:30.2	pharmacology.com. There's a contact button. Certainly you can email me with questions,
0:36.1	comments, things of that nature as well for future
0:40.3	episodes or if you're looking for additional resources, materials, I'm certainly available
0:46.1	or try to answer as many emails as I can. So with that, let's shift into the drug of the day,
0:53.8	Clonidine.
0:55.5	Now, this is a drug that's classified.
1:00.2	I would guess traditionally as an antihypertensive,
1:04.3	at least that's where I've probably seen it used most often.
1:08.3	But it is a little bit of jack-of-all-trades, where I've seen it used for a variety of different reasons, which I'll get into.
1:16.3	So brand name of Clonidine, catapress is what you're going to hear in practice used.
1:23.3	If you hear a brand name used, I would say most clinicians, providers, pharmacists I've worked with,
1:29.1	simply just use the generic older name Clonidine because it is an older drug. It's been around for a really long time.
1:36.6	Now, from a mechanism of action standpoint, this drug works a little bit differently than some of the other traditional blood pressure medication.
1:47.3	This one actually acts in the central nervous system, and it's considered an alpha-2 agonist.
1:54.8	So it stimulates alpha-2 receptors in the central nervous system or CNS.
2:00.3	And what that does is that reduces sympathetic outflow.
2:05.4	Now, if you remember sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system,
2:09.7	that sympathetic side of things is that fight or flight response.
	...

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