Clotrimazole 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

🗓️ 29 May 2025

⏱️ 15 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On this podcast episode, I discuss Clotrimazole pharmacology, adverse effects, indications, administration, and much more.

Clotrimazole is an imidazole antifungal that exerts its pharmacological effect by inhibiting the synthesis of ergosterol, an essential component of fungal cell membranes. This inhibition compromises membrane integrity, leading to leakage of cellular contents and ultimately fungal cell death.

Clotrimazole is primarily used topically due to poor systemic absorption when administered via the skin or mucous membranes, which limits systemic side effects.

When clotrimazole is used intravaginally or orally in lozenge form, localized concentrations are sufficient to treat mucocutaneous infections without significant systemic exposure.

Pay attention when clotrimazole is used frequently to treat Candida infections as corticosteroids, immunosuppression, and antibiotics may increase the risk of this type of infection.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, all, welcome back to the Real Life Pharmacology podcast. I'm your host, pharmacist,
0:05.0	Eric Christensen. Thank you so much for listening today. As always, go to real life pharmacology.com.
0:11.9	Get your free 31-page PDF on the top 200 drugs. Great study guide, great refresher. If you're out
0:18.6	in practice or whether you're a student, definitely a must
0:22.2	have, and simply an email will get you access to that. Absolutely no cost to you. So go take
0:27.6	advantage of that and we'll also get you updates when we've got new podcasts and other content
0:32.8	available as well. All right. So the drug of the day today is clotrimazole. And the brand name of this
0:40.7	medication, well, there are a bunch of different brand names for this medication, but the two most
0:47.1	common I probably see, I would say number one, is Lotriman. And I do see mycelex, that name thrown
0:54.0	around a bit as well. So those are probably the two
0:57.0	most common brand names there. What is this medication used for? So it can be used for a variety of
1:05.6	things. Over the counter, most common things I see it used for are athletes' foot, ringworm,
1:14.2	and potentially jock itch as well.
1:17.5	So those are all different fungal infections caused by tinias species.
1:24.1	And I'll talk a little bit about that coming up here.
1:27.4	It can be used for other infections as well,
1:31.4	other fungal infections as well, so candidiasis infections. So we do have oral candidiasis as well as
1:40.7	vaginal candidiasis too. So a few different things this medication used for, and because
1:48.0	it's used for a few different things, we ultimately have a bunch of different dosage forms as well
1:55.3	with clotrimazole, which I'll get into a little bit as well. First, let's mention the mechanism of action. So this binds up
2:05.5	phospholipids in the fungal cell membrane. This changes that cell wall permeability, and that can
2:14.3	basically allow the intracellular components and elements to essentially leave the cell.
	...

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