Hey all, welcome back to the Real Life Pharmacology podcast. I am your host, pharmacist, Eric Christensen.

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So again, go check that out. Real Life Pharmacology.com. The drug of the day today is Larazadone.

Brand name of this medication is Latuda. This medication is an antipsychotic.

And more specifically, it's a second generation antipsychotic.

Mechanistically, how this drug primarily works,

and most antipsychotics work is they antagonize the D2 receptors or dopamine 2 receptors.

And if you remember the yin and the yang between, you know, induced movement disorders,

so things like Parkinson's disease, that's generally caused by a deficiency of dopamine.

So we supplement with dopamine to treat that.

So on the flip side, you can imagine antipsychotics, they block dopamine.

They can cause Parkinson's-like symptoms, which often we refer to as extraparaminal symptoms,

which I'll get to a little more in depth

in the adverse effect profile. But that's one of the major ways that I remember mechanistically

how this works. If you have too much dopamine action in the brain, it can lead to psychotic symptoms.

If you have too little dopamine action in certain brain, it can lead to psychotic symptoms. If you have too little dopamine action in certain

parts of the brain, it can lead to movement disorders and things of that nature. In addition to

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