Eg. Fluoxetine is an inhibitor of another medication. Does that mean it leaked the other medication work more or less?
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Inhibit means to stop something from doing what it wants to do. If you were jogging and I came up and held you in place, I’d be inhibiting you.
So if your medication says it inhibits X other medication, that means it stops that other medication from working, and your doctor should know that they probably shouldn’t prescribe both to you.
in short: makes it work less or not at all.
Obviously: this is not medical advice.
Drugs that are inhibitors of one another generally mess with metabolism.
The enzymes that break up drugs in our bodies are in limited supply. Fluoxetine being an inhibitor means it stops the enough of these enzymes from doing their jobs.
If a drug needs the enzymes to be metabolized and removed from the body but is unable to so, it builds up and can cause an overdose or toxic effects.
Some drugs are inactive in their pill/original form. They become active when they metabolize into a different substance. We call these prodrugs. If the prodrug is unable to break down, it never becomes active and there is no therapeutic effect.
Other super common inhibitors that should be avoided when taking meds are grapefruit and St. John’s Wort.
The opposite of everything above is called an inducer. An inducer makes the enzymes work really hard so drugs are metabolized to fast and don’t have time to work in the body.
TLDR: Inhibitors mess with metabolism causing a drug to build up and cause toxic effects or in the case of prodrugs, not build up at all.
Imagine a cell like a USB port. You can plug in your thumb drive and upload some data, which will cause the cell to do something. An inhibitor will plug something else into the USB port so there is nowhere to plug in the thumb drive.
An inhibitor slows or stops something else.
In the case of fluoxetine it’s not inhibiting another medication but a process in the brain called serotonin reuptake. Serotonin is a neurotransmitter, a chemical that helps the brains cells communicate. Normally the brain pumps a certain amount of serotonin into the brain space around the neurons and then reabsorbs or reuptakes some of it to maintain certain levels. Fluoxetine (and other drugs like it) partially block some of the parts of the brain cells that reabsorb serotonin, thus maintaining higher levels in the brain. For reasons that are still not fully understood this helps reduce/eliminate the symptoms of some conditions like clinical depression and OCD.
When you say a drug is an inhibitor it stops a certain process/function
Take for example – proton pump inhibitors – omeprazole, lansoprazole etc.
They act by stopping the proton pump (it pumps hydrogen ion into the stomach).
Outcome – when the proton pump is “inhibited” the process of hydrogen ion being pumped is stopped, leading to a decrease in hydrogen ion concentration in the stomach, leading to a decrease in formation of Hydrochloric acid (H + Cl), leading to a decrease in acidity of the stomach – useful if you are already experiencing hyperacidity or ulcerations
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