Drugs And Medications: Very Different Effects Depending On Sex
It seems quite intuitive to think that drugs do not affect men and women equally, but many of the studies carried out with drugs (before launching them on the market) are not carried out on women, arguing that menstrual cycles can affect study results.
Another more specific example is that of pregnant women. Pregnant women do not participate in trials of this type, for obvious reasons, but this leads to some long-term problems, such as ignorance of the effects of these substances during the pregnancy period. So, a woman with a Bipolar disorder as has been well established, requires a higher dose of the drug Lamictal to control your depression During pregnancy.
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) withdrew 8 out of 10 drugs on the market because they posed greater health risks for women than for men
Furthermore, the probability of suffering side effects is in the women between a 50 and 75 percent higher with respect to men.
Next, we proceed to mention some types of medications and the different effects they can cause depending on sex.
Analgesics
Antidepressants
Men, on the other hand, seem to get more benefits from tricyclic antidepressants
The fact that certain antidepressants work best effects on women It is because your blood has lower fixation capacity so its hemoproteins absorb fewer foreign substances.
The female stomach is less acidic than the male, this causes the SSRIs to be absorbed, apparently, more quickly, thus accentuating its toxicity
Another important point is that the highest percentage of fat in women It also increases your body’s ability to retain antidepressants for longer periods of time
Zolpidem is more easily broken down by man (a type of hypnotic) and other sleep inducers.
The woman on the contrary, retains more of these drugs in the liver, which means that it can affect you to a greater extent throughout the day
Anxiolytics
The fact that the women have a less acidic stomach than men can help them notice the effects of the stronger anxiolytics increasing the levels of toxicity of the doses.
Like the women They filter drugs more slowly, They should leave more time between doses especially regarding the consumption of benzodiazepines (one of the most common anxiolytics).
As with antidepressants, fat facilitates the retention of anxiolytics in the body for longer, increasing the risk of suffering from side effects and toxicity at lower doses
Antipsychotics
The information available on the effects of antipsychotics according to sex has been based primarily on first-generation drugs, such as haloperidol (a type of antipsychotic widely used at the end of the 20th century). These have been shown to be more effective in women than in men. Men require higher doses to obtain the same results
Anticonvulsants
The hepatic enzyme CYP3A4 (1), which is especially active in women makes these drugs less effective than in men
Conclusion
Despite the lack of studies in this regard (in fact, these results are one of the few that exist), this is a marginalized yet extremely important field of study, since, taking into account sex differences, drugs could be better adapted to each gender, avoiding unnecessary risks. Thus, The FDA announced that it will intensify its efforts to take these types of differences into account in upcoming clinical trials
(1) The enzyme CYP3A4 is responsible for metabolizing xenobiotic compounds in the body, or in other words, it is responsible for processing compounds that do not appear in the human body naturally, such as most drugs.
