Hey, all, welcome back to the real-life pharmacology podcast. I'm your host, pharmacist,

Eric Christensen. Thank you so much for listening today. The drug of the day today is going to be

capped upril. But before we get to that, I want to make sure you go check out real-life

pharmacology.com. Get your free 31-page PDF on the top 200 drugs great study guide great refresher simply an email

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All right. So getting into CaptaPro. Brand name of this medication is Capitan. This is an ACE inhibitor.

As a reminder, ACE inhibitors competitively inhibit angiotensin converting enzyme.

Now, what does that enzyme do? So angiotensin converting enzyme does what it says it does.

It converts angiotensin 1 into angiotensin 2. And angiotensin 2 is really the big,

important thing to remember here. This is a potent vasoconstrictor. So if we have less of the

vasoconstrictor angiotensin 2, we are naturally going to cause vasodilation

and help lower blood pressure, which indeed is what captapril is used for.

Dosing. So one of the major strikes against captapril and probably why you don't see it too often in your practice, or at least most practices, it is dosed frequently. So it's anywhere ranging from 6.25 milligrams up to 50 milligrams three times a day is kind of the usual standard dosing.

The indications, hypertension, of course, but we've also got some of those compelling indications that go with other ACE inhibitors as well, such as CHF, ACS, and protenureic chronic kidney disease.

I also wanted to mention with dosing that if renal function has declined,

and you're giving this medication on a chronic basis,

there is a need for dose reductions. And usually we just reduce the frequency.

Like I mentioned, it's normally dosed probably three times per day in most situations.

But as renal function declines, we don't need to

dose it quite as frequently. So my marker for captopril is around 50 mils per minute. You start

dipping below there and you may likely want to reduce the frequency that we're giving it just because

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