Hey all, welcome back to the Real Life Pharmacology podcast. I'm your host, pharmacist Eric Christensen,

and I thank you so much for listening today. Definitely go check out reallife pharmacology.com.

Snag your free 31-page PDF on the top 200 drugs. I really threw in a lot of highly testable

clinical pearls that you can definitely

take advantage and study from, certainly. So if you're out in clinical practice,

might just be a good refresher of things that you'll come across and that you'll see

periodically. So go take advantage of that. We'll send you updates when we've got new

podcasts as well as any new content that we've created and put out as well. So let's get into

the topic today. The drug I wanted to cover was olanzapine. Brand name of this medication is xyprexa. Mechanistically, how does this

medication work and what does it do? First off, it's an antipsychotic, of course, and it blocks

dopamine, specifically D2, dopamine 2 receptors, as far as how it helps with some of these

symptoms of psychosis associated with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder and things of that nature.

So main uses are that schizophrenia, also things like mania associated with bipolar disorder.

In addition to that mechanism of dopamine blockade, olanzapine has some antihistamine-type

activity, possibly some alpha blocking activity,

as well as some serotonin antagonist activity as well.

So not necessarily the cleanest of mechanisms, so to speak, and that relays into some of the adverse effects that you might see.

And again, a lot of the adverse effects are dose-dependent, as they are with many different medications.

But first, I wanted to mention EPS. So that's the top adverse effect that you're likely going to hear about associated with antipsychotics.

Now, olyansapine's a second generation antipsychotics are definitely, you know, not near as bad as a drug like

haloperidol, as far as those extraparaminal symptoms go.

One thing that differentiates olanzapine in the class of second generation antipsychotics,

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