Memantine 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

🗓️ 14 February 2019

⏱️ 11 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Memantine is classified as an NMDA receptor antagonist. Memantine pharmacology is complex as is the pharmacology of any medication working in the brain. This drug can help reduce the activity of glutamate, an excitatory neurotransmitter which can play a role in Alzheimer's dementia.

Memantine has an extended release dosage form that is dosed once per day compared to twice per day for the immediate release. However, the cost of the extended release is much more expensive, so it is recommended to begin with the immediate release.

Memantine is cleared by the kidney. In patients with reduced kidney function, you must review to assess if the memantine dose needs to be adjusted.

When using memantine or other dementia medications, be sure to look out for medications that can cause dementia type symptoms. CNS depressants like benzodiazepines, sleep medicines, and anticholinergics are all examples of meds that could exacerbate dementia.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hey, all Eric Christensen here with the Real Life Pharmacology podcast.
0:04.0	Thanks for listening today.
0:05.8	Remember to go check out the real life pharmacology.com website.
0:10.6	Snag your free 31 page PDF.
0:15.5	Great little resource for pharmacy students, nursing students, med students,
0:20.2	just as kind of a quick study guide on important pearls with the top 200 drugs.
0:26.1	So certainly at no cost to you and simply for subscribing to follow the podcast.
0:32.8	With that, today I'm going to cover Mammantine Pharmacology.
0:41.2	So brand name drug here is Nameda,
0:52.4	and this drug is primarily used for dementia. Now, an important factor with dementia in dealing with patients and caregivers and these type of medications that work
0:59.3	in Alzheimer's dementia, you've got to remember that patients sometimes have unrealistic expectations.
1:06.9	These drugs do not stop dementia and they do not reverse dementia.
1:12.1	Okay, there may be some symptomatic improvements maybe initially,
1:16.8	but ultimately that disease progression with Alzheimer's will not be stopped in the long run.
1:25.2	Now, it may help maybe delay the progression or allow functioning,
1:31.3	a little more functioning for a period of time, but again, not going to reverse, not going to stop.
1:36.7	So very important to remember that. Now, the mechanism of action with this medication, so it's classified as an NMDA receptor antagonist.
1:50.1	And the big thing with that or the theory is that glutamate, which binds this receptor,
1:58.1	glutamate from that binding and activation can potentially be a contributing factor
2:05.5	or a cause in contributing to Alzheimer's dementia. So that's a very important thing to
2:14.5	think about that that glutamate might be causing that. And if we can block
2:20.0	the activity of that glutamate by blocking the receptor in MDA that it binds to, we're going to
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Eric Christianson, PharmD; Pharmacology Expert and Clinical Pharmacist, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Eric Christianson, PharmD; Pharmacology Expert and Clinical Pharmacist and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.