![]() One of the first recommended roles of a polypill was as a means of providing recommended medications to people with heart disease, stroke and other forms of cardiovascular disease. Fixed-dose combination (FDC) products today are also common for treating other diseases, such as tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS.ĭevelopments in polypill usage for disease therapy Treating cardiovascular disease Also, elderly patients in particular are likely to require several medications on a daily basis for managing multiple conditions, and they are also particularly susceptible to difficulties remembering or keeping track of their regimen.Ĭombinatorial drug products were proposed for treating diagnosed conditions long before they were proposed for preventive medicine, including "aspolol" (a combination of aspirin and atenolol) for those diagnosed with cardiovascular disease. HIV, mental-health, transplant, and certain other patient groups are known for especially high pill-burdens (whether temporary or indefinite). Polypills are a useful therapeutic tool for those afflicted with various diseases/conditions, by consolidating multiple medications into a single product and thereby simplifying medication administration for healthcare personnel as well as alleviating pill-burden for patients. Physicians in most jurisdictions have wide discretion to prescribe customized drug products containing unique drug-dosage combinations (and/or formulations thereof) specifically for individual patients, which certain pharmacies can then sometimes produce for such patients.įor treatment or management of disease ![]() In addition to the noted fixed-dose types of polypills, polypills can also be custom-made for specific patients through a process called pharmacy compounding. The term polypill was first coined in the context of cardiovascular disease prevention, but has since gained broader acceptance, including now for combinatorial drug products that existed before the term was actually coined (as the bare term without any modifiers is now quite generic). Sometimes the multiple drugs in a given polypill might all be aimed at a single underlying condition (or, group of related conditions), partly because this expands the pool of potential patients for whom a given combination of drugs/dosages might be appropriate (particularly in the case of mass-produced polypills, i.e. Polypills can reduce the number of tablets or capsules (generally orally administered) that need to be taken, which in turn may facilitate handling and administration of pharmaceuticals as well as alleviate patient pill-burden. Polypills may be aimed to be consumed by healthy people as a means of preventive medicine, and/or treating actual pathophysiological condition(s), the former typically involving lower dosages than the latter. A polypill is commonly targets treatment or prevention of chronic conditions. In precise usage, a pill is a polypill if it contains at least 4 drugs (meaning that fixed-dose combinations of 2 or 3 drugs are not polypills). The prefix "poly" means "multiple", referring to the multiplicity of distinct drugs in a given "pill". Drug with multiple pharmaceutical ingredientsĪ polypill is a type of drug combination consisting of a single drug product in pill form (i.e., tablet or capsule) and thus combines multiple medications (that is, more than one active pharmaceutical ingredient).
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