Hey all, welcome back to the Real Life Pharmacology podcast.

I'm your host, Eric Christensen, pharmacist, board certified in pharmacotherapy and geriatrics.

Thanks so much for listening today.

You can track me down at LinkedIn and connect me there.

That's probably the easiest way to do it.

I'm fairly active there, as well as email me at Med Education 101 at gmail.com.

If you have any suggestions, comments, anything like that, definitely don't hesitate to reach out like

the gentleman that did it the other day, and he suggested I do the podcast on Lomotrogyne, which is

definitely a medication I see in clinical practice from time to time. So this drug is classified

primarily probably as an anticonvulsant. I would say the two most common indications I see it

used for are seizures or anti-convulsant activity there. The other one is in bipolar disorder

and particularly probably more common in bipolar depression in those type of patients.

Mechanistically, how does this medication work?

Okay, Lamotrogen or Lamictal by brand name works primarily by blocking glutamate release in the central nervous

system. And if you remember glutamate and what it does in the central nervous system.

And if you remember glutamate and what it does in the CNS, it's actually an excitatory

neurotransmitter, which makes a lot of sense if we're going to block something, we'd want to, and prevent seizures, for example,

we'd want to block an excitatory neurotransmitter,

which might increase the risk for seizures.

So ultimately, what Lomotrogen does from a 30,000-foot view is it really kind of settles down

or calms down the central nervous system.

So again, those indications, seizures, bipolar disorder, rarely. I have seen it used in headache prophylaxis, but that's an off-label use,

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