Hey all, welcome back to the real-life pharmacology podcast. I'm your host, pharmacist, Eric Christensen,

and I thank you so much for listening today. As always, go check out real-life pharmacology.com.

We've got a free 31-page PDF on the top 200 drugs. A great study guide, great refresher,

simply an email. We'll get you access to that. And then we've got, we'll get

you updates when we've got new podcast episodes available as well. So again, all that you can find

at real life pharmacology.com. All right, the drug of the day today is oxymorphone.

Brand name of this medication is Opana.

And it comes in two formulations focusing on oral administration here.

So it's an extended release formulation,

and there is an immediate release formulation as well.

This is an opioid medication utilized for moderate to severe pain in most situations.

I would say it's definitely used less common compared to probably oxycodone, hydromorphone,

hydrocodone, those are used more often,

but I do see oxymorphone occasionally.

So mechanistically, let's touch on that briefly.

So it binds opioid, specifically the mu receptors,

and its action leads to an inhibition in CNS pain pathways.

So by kind of suppressing that or blunting those transmitting pain signals,

naturally we get a reduced pain sensation for our patients.

So essentially a numbness.

The injury, the damage, whatever the case may be, it's still there.

It doesn't, opioids don't help with that.

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