Zofran: Applications in Medicine as a Serotonin Blocker
Chemotherapy induced nausea and vomiting, CINV, has been a significant problem with oncology patients over past years. As a result much research was done and has lead to the creation of Zofran (Bernstein and Ong 2002). Ondansetron, marketed as Zofran was the first of its kind; it is a serotonin 5-HT3 receptor blocker, otherwise know as an antiemetic agent. Ondansetron is a tremendous breakthrough and is much more effective than older antiemetics, in some cases by almost 50% (Ramsook 2002). Ondansetron was FDA approved in January 1991 as a treatment for chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting with parenteraly administered dosage. It was later approved in oral dosage forms as a treatment for post-operative nausea and vomiting in April 1995. In 1999 ondansetron was approved for use as an "orally disintegrating tablet," Zofran ODTc. This form of ondansetron does not require water to assist in swallowing (Clinical Pharmacology 2002). Now ondansetron is used primarily as a treatment for chemotherapy-induce and post-operative nausea and vomiting; however, it is also being recently used to treat drug dependencies such as alcoholism and to treat gastrointestinal disorders such as acute gastroenteritis.
Ondansetron is used primarily to treat chemotherapy patients in order to improve their quality of life assisting in an overall better outcome of their treatment (Ondansetron 2002). Aside from this treatment ondansetron is also used in a wide range of other cancer related treatments such as surgery and radiation therapy (Web MD 1996). Some other disorders that are related to the serotonin 5-HT3 are acute gastroenteritis (Ramsook 2002) and alcoholism (Johnson 2000). In a case study done by E M Harris the 5-hydroxytryptamine receptor antagonists have proven clinically effective in the reduction of CINV, which Harris claims to be the most "incapacitating adverse effect among patients receiving cancer chemotherapy." Dr. Harris also states that this leads to many of the problems listed above including malnutrition and dehydration. In this benchmarking project the ondansetron group included 572 patients that were 36.3% male and 68.7% of the total patients were inpatients with an average period of 9.4 day in the hospital. Ninety-seven percent of all drug administrations were intravenous, wile the remainder 3% were oral. Differences in results were not noted for sex or race, but were noted for different diagnoses and treatment protocols. Over all the results were outstanding. A complete recovery (no occurrence of emesis) was obtained in 72.8% of patients receiving ondansetron. A major recovery (no more than 2 incidences of emesis) was obtained in 17% of patients. A minor recovery (no more that 4 incidences of emesis) was obtained in 4.4% of patients. And lastly, failure (5 or more incidences of emesis) was recorded in 6.0% of patients (1997). Overall ondansetron is an effective drug in treating CINV incidences in chemotherapy patients and datat shows that the use of this drug greatly reduces incidences of CINV allowing patients to have a better quality of life. In a randomized, prospective, double-blind clinical trial Ramsook tests ondansetron effectiveness in treating this disorder. The age group for this study included children from the age ranges of 6 months to 12 years old who had 5 or more occurrences of vomiting within the previous 24
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Approximate Word count = 1459
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)
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