Hey all, welcome back to the Real Life Pharmacology podcast. I am your host, pharmacist,

Sarah Christensen. Thank you so much for listening today. Go check out Real Life Pharmacology.com.

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

Brand name of this medication is Callan. I've also seen Veriland used.

And this drug is classified as a non-dihydropyridine calcium channel

blocker so if you recall from a podcast on amylotapine I believe I think I've done one on

nyphedopine as well those are dihydropyridine calcium channel blockers.

And structurally, obviously, there's some difference there.

But from a clinical practice standpoint, the biggest differentiator is that the non-dihydropyridine

calcium channel blockers, like verapamil here

can affect the heart much more significantly than a dihydropyridine calcium channel blocker.

So again, classification is a non-dihydro-pyridine calcium channel blockers,

sometimes abbreviated CCB for calcium channel blocker.

So you'll definitely see that in practice.

Mechanistically, as we think about the classification, calcium channel blocker,

Vrapamil blocks calcium from entering voltage gated channels in the smooth muscle and heart.

Okay. So that's, again, that's that difference versus a dihydro period and really only affects smooth muscle.

Verapamil, non-dihydro period and calcium channel blocker affects smooth muscle and heart.

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