Hey all, welcome back to the Real Life Pharmacology podcast. I'm your host, pharmacist,

Eric Christensen. Thank you for listening today. I greatly appreciate it.

So always go check out reallife pharmacology.com. We've got a top 200 study guide. It's 31 pages.

Definitely highlight some of the most important clinical pearls that you're

going to come across in practice, as well as things that often show up on board exams or

pharmacology exams throughout your career. So go check that out, real-life pharmacology.com.

All right, the drug of the day today is laresapam brand name of this medication is adivan and it is a drug that i definitely see used a lot in practice particularly

the most frequent situation i see it used is management of anxiety.

And more specifically, even than that, I definitely see it prescribed as needed a lot in hospice patients.

Mechanistically, what does this drug do?

It enhances the action of GABA.

And if you remember from your physiology,

GABA is an inhibitory type neurotransmitter.

So by enhancing that action,

you can imagine it's going to create some sedation,

some lethargy, and things of that nature as we're trying to manage symptoms of anxiety and agitation, for example.

Other potential indications that I have seen it used for,

neuroleptic malignant syndrome and serotonin syndrome. Those are a couple of

really rare situations that happen due to adverse drug reactions, as you could probably guess,

from serotonin-related drugs. And then neuroleptic malignant syndrome would be from, typically from antipsychotic

medications. A couple others, chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting, particularly anticipatory.

That is an indication for benzodiazepines like lorazepam.

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