Global Warming and Prescribing: A Review on Medicines' Effects and Precautions
Abstract
INTRODUCTION: Global warming is slowly but surely becoming one of the greatest problems of the modern world. Heatwaves with extremely high temperatures and humidity changes are particularly dangerous as they can lead to increased mortality rates and increased side effects of certain medications. The goal of this study was to give a short review of the most critical issues healthcare professionals should be mindful of when it comes to prescription of medicines during high temperature periods.
METHODS: A PubMed literature search was conducted in January 2021 in order to identify studies showing stability changes of most prescribed drugs in high temperatures as well as studies demonstrating impact of some drugs on human thermoregulation.
RESULTS: A vast majority of the commonly prescribed drugs, including Simvastatin, Levothyroxine, Omeprazole and Atorvastatin aren't susceptible to heat. However, some studies found that Amlodipine and Lansoprazole degrade following heat exposure. A study demonstrated the effects of low relative humidity environment on Levothyroxine tablets. While Levothyroxine remained stable at high temperatures, it significantly degraded with the decrease in humidity. Since all vaccines, both viral and bacterial, are most stable at exactly 2-8 °C, providing adequate storage has turned out to be an immense challenge. In general, killed whole-cell bacterial vaccines, like pertussis vaccine, show a higher degree of stability of potency compared to live…
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