Drug interaction

Drug interaction is a situation in which two or more separate drugshave been absorbedinto the body and their effects are affected by each other, i.e. the effects are increased or decreased, or they produce a new effect that neither produces on its own.

Differing types of interactions include:

• Enzymeinducing- drug A enduces the body to produce more of an enzyme which metabolisesdrug B thus reducing the effective concentration of the drug B leading to loss of effectiveness of drug B. Drug A effectiveness is not altered
• Enzyme reducing - drug A inhibitsthe production of the enzyme metabolising drug B, thus an elevation of drug B occurs possibly leading to an overdose.\

References

U. N. Harle, N. J. Gaikwad. Emerging Challenge of Herb-Drug Interaction. Indian Journal of Pharmaceutical Education Vol. 39, Number 02, 2005 [1]

External links

Drug Interactions: What You Should Know. U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Center for Drug Evaluation and Research [2]

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
It uses material from the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug+interaction Wikipedia article Drug interaction.