Pravastatin 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

🗓️ 17 February 2022

⏱️ 11 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On this episode, I breakdown pravastatin pharmacology, adverse effects, drug interactions and when you might see this drug used in practice.

Pravastatin is a statin and will lower LDL. Its use is a little limited in the fact that it is not as potent as other agents in its LDL lowering effects.

Pravastatin is hydrophilic which differentiates it from simvastatin, atorvastatin, and lovastatin.

I describe rhabdomyolysis in this podcast as it is a potential rare adverse effect of pravastatin.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey all, welcome back to the Real Life Pharmacology podcast. I'm your host, pharmacist, Derek Christensen,
0:05.5	and I thank you for listening today. As always, go check out Real Life Pharmacology.com.
0:11.5	Grab your free 31-page PDF on the top 200 drugs. Great study guide, great review if you're going
0:18.4	through pharmacology classes right now, or just a great refresher if you're going through pharmacology classes right now or just a great
0:22.8	refresher if you're out in practice. So again, real-life pharmacology.com. Snaug that free
0:28.6	PDF on the top 200 drugs. All right, let's get into the drug of the day today, and that is
0:34.4	Pravastatin. Brand name of this medication is Pravacol.
0:39.2	I have seen use kind of slowly decline over time.
0:45.1	Occasionally I get a patient on this medication.
0:49.8	It is a cholesterol agent, or an anticholesterol agent, I guess, and classified as a statin as well.
0:58.2	So it ultimately lowers cholesterol, lowers LDL, which is usually what we're targeting to treat.
1:05.3	It can help with reduction of MI and stroke, and that's really primarily what it's going to be used for.
1:12.7	Mechanistically, it's a statin, so it's going to inhibit HMG COA reductase. If you recall, this is
1:21.5	the rate limiting step in the body's production of cholesterol.
1:32.9	And again, specifically, that's going to ultimately help lower LDL.
1:43.0	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
1:47.7	lowering effects. And so what do I mean by that? So if you remember there's mild,
1:54.1	moderate, and high intensity statins, or low intensity, moderate intensity and high
2:00.2	intensity statins. And and high intensity statins.
2:01.9	And the high intensity statins, atorvastatin, and rosuvastatin, which I've covered in
2:08.3	podcasts before, those are typically the go-to agents because a lot of times in patients that
2:15.2	need cholesterol lowering therapy, we're thinking they might need
	...

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