HISTORY OF MEDICINE – In wanting to study the effects of alcohol on an antihypertensive drug, Canadian researchers made a surprising discovery.
Science is like love: sometimes you find what you weren’t looking for, and alcohol can help break the ice. At the end of the 1980s, history does not say if the pharmacologists of the University of Western Ontario, in Canada, found love. But they discovered an unexpected enemy: grapefruit juice, capable of singularly modifying the absorption of certain drugs…
For David G. Bailey and his team, it all started on a Saturday night that we can guess was watered down. The researchers wanted to study on volunteers the effects of alcohol on an antihypertensive drug, felodipine. But it was necessary to make the participants drink without them knowing if the beverage contained alcohol or not. So the Canadian researchers went in search of a fruit juice capable of masking the particular taste of ethanol. “Grapefruit juice was chosen (…) after a test carried out with all the fruit juices from a domestic refrigerator”they will write…
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