Individual responses to drugs

[RobinN]

Curious if this is how over time, a drug can possibly change effectiveness. Certainly, how one person might have more side effects or better results than another.

Bugs and Drugs; November 2005; Scientific American Magazine; by Gunjan Sinha; 3 Page(s)

Last year scientists at drug giant Pfizer noticed something peculiar. Rats in a routine study were excreting unusually low levels of a metabolite in their urine called hippuric acid. It was a metabolic oddity that could throw off further laboratory results. So the scientists dug deeper. The rats had been reared at the same facility in Raleigh, N.C., as another group. The metabolite levels should have all been the same. But curiously, the rats in question had been bred in one particular room. Further investigation turned up an unlikely culprit--the rats carried a unique composition of gut microorganisms that had altered their metabolism.

"That was really a surprise," remarks Lora C. Robosky, principal scientist at Pfizer. Robosky is part of a team at the company investigating how spectroscopy and pattern-recognition software could analyze metabolites in body fluids--called metabonomics--to better select drug compounds. Along the way, the technology has revealed a factor often overlooked as a source of individual responses to drugs--gut microflora.

http://www.sciamdigital.com/index.cf...61664A4F58CDA9

[brain]

Robin:

It's true that an individual can develop
a resistance or tolerance to a drug over
a period of time. Especially notorious with
those antibiotics; which is why Doctors
are now more careful with dispensing them
when they've learned that the over-usage
of such, people can actually develop
immunity to them, resistance to them to
a point where its rendered null and void.

There's been times when I've had need of
antibiotic and they've had to "let it ride",
in other words - go without it.

With anti-epileptic drugs - I've developed tolerance and
resistance to some of the drugs where they
had become null and void ~ where it didn't
matter how much they gave me; it was of
no effect. It was just as if you were giving
me a placebo (sugar pill). There are 3 anti-epileptic drugs
that I had developed a resistance/tolerance
to; but after a period of time (years), and
being reintroduced to it - it will work for a
period of time before it all starts 'acting up
again' (resistance) and the whole anti-epileptic drug plan
just collapses where another anti-epileptic drug has to come
in picture in lieu of that drug. I will decline to
name the drugs lest other people would get
the idea for the wrong reason and implying
it upon themselves.

In addition, a Neurologist did comment to me
that sometimes when our body changes as we
grow older, what didn't work back then, suddenly
works but they do not know why, and it can be
vice versa, what worked for them back then
can backfire, and suddenly not work for them
anymore. (In other words - it can go both ways)
Now this was back in the late 80s before we
headed off to Georgia temporarily, when I was
informed of it, and my father was still alive and
was still a Pharmacist and he confirmed it as
well. So it is a known fact, not just with the
neuropharmacology - but with any phamacology
medications.