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

and I thank you for listening today. As always, go check out Real Life Pharmacology.com.

Grab your free 31-page PDF on the top 200 drugs. Great study guide, great review if you're going

through pharmacology classes right now, or just a great refresher if you're going through pharmacology classes right now or just a great

refresher if you're out in practice. So again, real-life pharmacology.com. Snaug that free

PDF on the top 200 drugs. All right, let's get into the drug of the day today, and that is

Pravastatin. Brand name of this medication is Pravacol.

I have seen use kind of slowly decline over time.

Occasionally I get a patient on this medication.

It is a cholesterol agent, or an anticholesterol agent, I guess, and classified as a statin as well.

So it ultimately lowers cholesterol, lowers LDL, which is usually what we're targeting to treat.

It can help with reduction of MI and stroke, and that's really primarily what it's going to be used for.

Mechanistically, it's a statin, so it's going to inhibit HMG COA reductase. If you recall, this is

the rate limiting step in the body's production of cholesterol.

And again, specifically, that's going to ultimately help lower LDL.

Now, one of the big downsides of pravastatin and why its use has, I think, slowly decreased over time is that you can only get to moderate intensity

lowering effects. And so what do I mean by that? So if you remember there's mild,

moderate, and high intensity statins, or low intensity, moderate intensity and high

intensity statins. And and high intensity statins.

And the high intensity statins, atorvastatin, and rosuvastatin, which I've covered in

podcasts before, those are typically the go-to agents because a lot of times in patients that

need cholesterol lowering therapy, we're thinking they might need

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