How are drugs processed by the body?
Drugs act on target sites in body tissues to cause a therapeutic effect. They are removed from the body by being converted into an inactive form. The P-450 family of drug metabolizing enzymes inactivates most prescription drugs. The most important and most thoroughly studied of these enzymes are CYP2D6 and CYP2C9. More than half of the population has at least one defect in these enzymes that can greatly increase the risk of an adverse drug reaction.
