E-Paper
Therapeutic drug monitoring: ‘Drug testing must as different races metabolise medicines differently’
The lecture was delivered as part of the Diamond Jubilee celebrations of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research – Indian Institute of Toxicology Research in Lucknow
Drugs are metabolised differently by people of different age groups, ethnicities among other factors. There is a need for therapeutic drug monitoring (testing that measures the amount of a medicine in your blood), especially for drugs which work on the nervous system.
Those were the words of NIMHANS (National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences) director and senior professor, psychiatry, Bengaluru, Pratima Murthy, delivering a lecture ‘Expanding the role of assessments in the field of neurobehavioral toxicity - detecting drugs of abuse and therapeutic drug monitoring’.
She also shared the harmful effects of tobacco on a pregnant woman.
The lecture was delivered as part of the Diamond Jubilee celebrations of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research – Indian Institute of Toxicology Research (CSIR-IITR) on Wednesday.
She said that the majority of guidelines are not made as per the requirements of the Indian population but are based on requirements as prescribed by the Western world.
She gave the example that to cure schizophrenia, people living in India need only 60% of clozapine dose of what Caucasians are prescribed. This is due to changes in ethnicity.
The lecture by Murthy was the first under the IDEA ( IITR Diamond Jubilee Elocution Address) series.
On this occasion, a memorandum of understanding was also signed between NIMHANS and CSIR-IITR . As part of the MoU, both institutions will utilise each other’s expertise for advancing academics and research in the areas of mutual interest, said director CSIR-IITR Bhaskar Narayan.
