This is especially important when it comes to children. This is because kids vary in weight in relation to age more than adults do, but the vast majority of drugs are dosed by age. This is just insanity at it's finest.
Yep, and that's only using the rough metric of bodyweight. There are a number of other major factors like size and health of liver, whether the patient has any under/over expression of metabolic enzymes, etc that can further complicate the determination of proper dosage.
Would be super cool if we had an objective measure of proper dosage - such as blood concentration or excreted metabolites - to give us more insight into how the drug is being metabolized by the individual.
Re:The Uselessness of Phenylephrine
by simulate-me on Wednesday March 30, 2022 @04:35PM
(#30860457)
Is there any evidence that harm is being caused from age-based dosing?
The one-size-fits-all drug dosing we do in this country seems crazy to me.
"Research Chemical" drug users have developed techniques to calibrate doses of substances with unknown potency - start with ~100th of what you expect to be an active dose and then gradually double it until proper effects are achieved.
I'd imagine it would be more expensive for pharmacies to distribute drugs in this way, but allowing patients to titrate their doses could significantly reduce/avoid negative side effects from just throwing the same standardized dose at every person with a prescription regardless of bodyweight.