Abstract
While hormonal changes during the ovulatory cycles affect multiple body systems, medical management, including medication dosing remains largely uniform between the sexes. Little is known about sex-specific pharmacology in women. Although hormonal fluctuations of the normal menstruating process alters women’s physiology and brain biochemistry, medication dosing does not consider such cyclical changes. Using schizophrenia as an example, this paper illustrates how a woman’s clinical symptoms can change throughout the ovulatory cycle, leading to fluctuations in medication responses. Effects of sex steroids on the brain, clinical pharmacology are discussed. Effective medication dose may be different at different phases of the menstrual cycle. Further research is needed to better understand optimal treatment strategies in reproductive women; we present a potential clinical trial design for examining optimal medication dosing strategies for conditions that have menstruation related clinical fluctuations.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 127-133 |
Number of pages | 7 |
Journal | Translational and Clinical Pharmacology |
Volume | 27 |
Issue number | 4 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2019 Dec |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2019 Tak Kim.
Keywords
- Clinical trial design
- Drug dose
- Menstrual cycle
- Schizophrenia
- Sex steroids
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Pharmacology (medical)