Low birth weight can cause problems drug treatment

PharmaLive.com (11 November 2010) - new study has found that poor nutrition during pregnancy and nursing mother can cause problems for her offspring capacity deal drugs, even into adulthood.

The results of the study, by researchers from the University of Oregon State suggest have in the future doctors to prescribe drugs ranging from Tylenol to cancer chemotherapy to factor weight at birth with body weight in the determination of the decisions of their patients.

In this study laboratory animal kidneys underweight born mothers low protein diets during pregnancy and nursing have significantly lower capacity to process and transport of drugs that animals whose mother had enough protéines.Cette finding suggests that low birth weight can inhibit the capabilities of the body to treat therapeutic drugs, undermining their effectiveness.

The culprit seems to be a protein called a "drug carrier", said Ganesh Cherala, Assistant Professor at the Faculty of pharmacy of the USO.

"These carriers, which sit on the cell membrane, enter drug molecules in the blood and put them in the cell", he explains. "And then a second series of carriers seize the drugs of the cell and dump in urine."

Animals of low weight at birth, the carriers Cherala watched - called Oats 1 (organic anion transporter) and Pgp (P-glycoprotein) - were around 50 times less frequent than in normal weight at birth, depending on the age and the carrier animals. The gap had gender, while females showed a higher deficit over time.

Less kidney carriers mean that less medication can be excreted out of the body, according to the Cherala.Negative results may vary from toxic accumulation of drugs in blood with insufficient therapeutic benefits by prescription drugs.

There are several irony in this finding, Cherala noted.First of all, scientists know that low birth weight increases the risk of diabetes in humans, as well as cardiovascular disease and metabolic syndrome (high levels of cholesterol, blood sugar and blood pressure).Thus, low birth weight patients are more likely than people of normal weight at birth need drugs to their lives.Yet these same subjects may be less able to deal with drugs that they need.

Secondly, the researchers found a link between low birth weight and adult obesity among humains.parce current weight is a major determinant of doses of medication (with height, age and gender), obese patients usually get higher doses of their physicians patients not obèses.Mais if obesity a patient follows from low birth weight, the highest dose may be that his or her body can handle.

"Say I'm low birth weight and becoming obese, because of this", said Cherala, who works at Portland Lab of the Faculty of pharmacy OSU installation of docks downtown from Oregon Health Sciences University. "If you dose because of this higher weight, you really aggravating the problème.Vous are assumed that if you are over weight, you have more fact transporteurs.En, that is exactly the opposite.»

The results will be presented on 16 November at the annual meeting of the American Association of pharmaceutical sciences in New Orleans.

"The main objective of our laboratory is to discover how we can use to optimize the dose and customize the regimen birth weight", said Cherala.

Editor's note: this article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.

Source of the story:

The story above is reproduced (with drafting adaptations by staff at PharmaLive.com) materials provided by Oregon State University.

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited for this.

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