Again, I’m borrowing Some Common Sense’s account.
Health,
Lipitor = atorvastatin calcium
Mechanism of action: 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl-coenzyme (HMG-CoA) reductase inhibitor
Indications: hypercholesterolemia, cardiovascular protective agent. Contraindications: active liver disease, pregnancy, lactation, allergic and unexplained increases in LFT at least 3x ULN
Pregnancy category: X
Dosing range: 10 – 80mg once daily with or without food
Most common adverse events: increase in LFTs, myopathy, myalgia | Evidence of modulation of side effects by CoQ – 10 / ubiquitin is spotty and uncertain.
Drug interactions: CYP3A4 metabolised (how many drug interactions can you derive from this statement, Health?)
There are several others in the class. Look at the ATP IV guidelines (found on NIH website)- you may very well end up taking it (they’re class effects of all the HMG CoA inhibitors).
Likewise, for anyone worried about statin-induced rhabdomyolysis, do you take ibuprofen (Do you have any idea how many doses consumed a year)? Naproxen? Meloxicam? Piroxicam? Aspirin? Ketorolac? Do you know what the most serious adverse event associated with NSAIDs are?
Sparky, concentrate on the courses you will need most. You need not re-take Gen Chem II if you can focus and do well on the subsequent courses. Again, the concepts are important – you will not be using the equations in Gen Chem very often but you do need to know all the concepts.
In terms of your course schedule in pharmacy school – in undergrad, you’re taking a few courses in different tracks of study – one in chem, another in bio, a third and fourth in some elective or core. In pharmacy school, you are still taking electives and unrelated course but your primary focus is on three sequences – pharmaceutics (drug formulation), pharmacology/medicinal chemistry (how, exactly, do drugs work and comparison of drugs in similar classes) and therapeutics (how to use drugs).
Pharmaceutics tends to be heavily based in mathematics and does require understand of concepts and being able to follow the purpose of an equation. Pharmacology is founded on physiology and requires a strong understand of the subject. Medicinal chemistry is based on biochemistry and requires a good deal of memorizing.
Therapeutics is about knowing mechanism of actions and treatment guidelines. Included in this is a knowledge of antibiotic spectrums. You can either memorize your way through the sequence (which does work but fails rather spectacularly when you need to apply something) or understand what is taught and deriving the treatment guidelines (difficult to do as most people don’t think this way).
The trend now is to have these courses line up so that at any given time you are discussing the same drugs. You will get very sick of hearing about certain drugs. So to answer your question, there is no comparison as there is a complete paradigm shift of course study. This is not easy street and you will spend a lot of time studying.