What determines the frequency at which one must take a certain medicine. If my doctor prescribed a certain dose to be had a 6-hour intervals, could I ask him to work the numbers for 8 hours or 12?
It’s been a while since I have been prescribed a 6-hour medicine. Is this somehow an advance in pharmacology that has happened in the last few years? I still hate 8 hour cycles since I tend to sleep more than 8 hours at night. Why can’t they all be 12 or 24 hour pills?
Never heard of “posology”.
To keep this simple, the dosing of a medication is based on the duration of time that a given dosage stays at effective levels in the body.
By effective levels, I mean levels neither too high nor too low to do the job, whether the job is to kill bacteria or dilate the blood vessels or stimulate the pancreas to produce more insulin.
If a given dose results in effective levels for 6 hours, that dose should be given every 6 hours. If it’s 12 hours, then dosing every 12 hours works nicely.
Formulations of medications are designed and modified to make dosing more convenient. Most people can comply with once a day dosing, and the rate of missing doses isn’t too much worse with medications that require twice a day dosing. But go to 3 times a day, and the average person will miss a dose often enough to possibly jeopardize the desired outcome of the treatment.
So drug companies do work hard to make preparations that can be conveniently dosed, and when a new formulation comes out making dosing simpler, it tends to be wildly popular.
That, in a grossly oversimplified nutshell, is a summary of medication dosing.
Oh, and thanks for introducing me to the term “posology”.
Do something for a quarter century, then learn what it’s called, that’s my motto!
Totally agree. When I was sick I had a pill that was to be taken every 6 hours. When I complained to my doc about it he laughed (a doc at the hospital had done the initial prescription) and said that even doctors won’t get up in the middle of the night to take meds. He changed the dosage and the frequency to make it more suitable.
A slight hijack: in a recent lecture (M1 neuroscience), one of my professors dedicated a significant block of time to chronotherapeutics, the timing of a dose to coincide with the appropriate body-state vis-a-vis circadian rhythms. This would be used to considerably improve the treatment of hypertension, inflammatory diseases, and other conditions that fluctuate with the circadian rhythms.
Qadgop, do you know how much of this is currently used in the ‘real world’?
It is a fairly common word in spanish. Where it says “Directions for use”, we get “Posologia”
and I hope I remember the names of my kids in a quarter century.
To add to Crescend’s question (is there a rule about hijacking a hijack of my own OP?). My blood pressure medication is prescribed to be taken daily, in the morning. Morning happens to be the most convenient time for me, but is there a real reason for it to be important that I take it in the morning? Will it have the same efficacy at a different time?