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

I'm your host, pharmacist Derek Christensen,

and I thank you so much for listening today.

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All right, let's get into the drug of the day today, and that is phenobarbital.

Brand name that I have heard most is luminal,

and this is an older anti-seizure medication or anti-epileptic medication.

Mechanistically, it is a barbiturate.

So it's going to basically depress the action of the brain in a general sense.

So sensory cortex, it's going to reduce motor activity, obviously cause

sedation. And ultimately, being an anti-seizure medication, that's what we're trying to do,

is to kind of blunt that activity and obviously reduce the incidence of seizures.

So that's the primary use.

It's not a drug that I see terribly often anymore.

It's a really, really dirty drug as far as drug interactions, things of that nature,

which I'll certainly get into.

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