Synonyms
Hypersensitivity drug reactions; type B reactions; allergic drug reactions
Definition
Idiosyncratic drug reactions are adverse drug reactions that do not occur in most patients at any dose and do not involve the known pharmacological properties of the drug. Using this definition, adverse reactions, such as cardiac arrhythmias caused by drugs that affect potassium channels, would not be idiosyncratic because they involve known pharmacological properties of the drug. However, many people would reasonably call these latter reactions idiosyncratic because they only occur in a small fraction of the population whose polymorphisms in the potassium channel make them more susceptible.
Characteristics
There are an almost infinite number of adverse drug reactions because every drug can interact with the body in many different ways. It would be too difficult to describe them all and the focus of this entry will be on idiosyncratic drug reactions. These reactions share common...
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References
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© 2006 Springer-Verlag
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Uetrecht, J. (2006). Idiosyncratic Drug Reactions. In: Encyclopedic Reference of Genomics and Proteomics in Molecular Medicine. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg . https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-29623-9_1420
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-29623-9_1420
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-44244-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-29623-2
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