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Just the same information presented in a slightly different way. This is CRITICAL to know in order to understand movement disorders such as Parkinsonism so you can know how the drugs work. Not interesting. It reads like an abbreviated text.
Another incorrect statement: They claim that drug tolerance to psychoactive substances such as alcohol is due to cytochrome P450 inactivation. While cytochrome P450 is the most important factor in the liver's metabolizing of many substances, tolerance is actually a purely psychological factor. Maybe because of brevity with the subject. Well, almost the same. Another example, it indicates that the half life for fluoxetine is 48 - 72 hours.
They don't present this critical information in this book. Few helpful pointers. It actually gets quite a few things wrong. If a person who has tolerance to the drug is moved to unfamiliar surroundings, all tolerance to the substance is gone.
I'm not sure how this book ended up in the Ridiculously Simple series. While technically correct, the pharmacokinetics appear to be nonlinear resulting in a longer half life with more than one dose, which is how a patient is going to take it. Further, its first metabolite is norfluoxetine, which is similarly as potent as fluoxetine, but has a longer half life. This is not correct. It even places emphasis on this in the text with Italics. With abuse, and increasing use of a substance, of course cytochrome P450 will build up to handle the increased load, but simply having an understanding of Michaelis-Menten kinetics shows that there is a maximum rate that will be achieved, and the deactivation rate of compounds will not proceed any further based on just increasing the enzyme to match the substrate concentration increases. It does put some abbreviated information in table form, but it's overly complicated and doesn't streamline the information any better than a typical, bloviating text book does.
Therefore, although the person can consume more of the substance, this doesn't mean that they have a tolerance. For instance, it states that D1 and D2 receptors are both inhibitory. In fact, D1 receptors are excitatory, but D2 receptors are inhibitory. Studies have shown that tolerance occurs when drug use occurs in the same surroundings repeatedly. They get just as intoxicated, they just don't overdose as easily.
I was disappointed in the book I hoped to learned about the fundamentals of clincal pharmacology, but all I got was page after page of tables of drugs, mechanism of action, undesirable effects, etc. I could have gotten that from the PDR or the Merck Manual. I learned more of what I was after just by reading wikipedia (unfortunately, after I bought the book). It was more on clinical practice than how clinical pharmacology is used to study new compounds or drug interactions, etc.
The book list drugs in tabels with the occasional paragraph above it trying to explain something. There are practically NO memory aids like in the microbiology series which had pictures and mnemonics etc. this book it tiny, over priced and a lot of medical school professors have warned against this book
I ordered this book with hopes that it would help me with my pharmacology class. It does list some medications with some brand names. It does not address any information about the math, or dosing involved in pharmacology that a nurse or surgical technologist might have to work out during surgery or otherwise. I am really embarrassed about the amount of money I spent having this book expressed to me.
While in school, I enjoyed the pictures and such. But found the book tough to learn from. Maybe I don't handle gigantic lists that well. Now that I'm out practicing, I like the book alot as a quick reference/refresher.
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