Anti-diarrhea: Everything You Need To Know

Antidiarrheals are the indicated medications, as their name suggests, for the treatment of diarrhea. Depending on the cause for which this disease is triggered, and the symptoms it produces, one or the other will be used.

Diarrhea is a very common symptom of consultation both in primary care and directly in the pharmacy. In order to better understand how these drugs work, it is essential to better understand this digestive disorder for which they are indicated.

What is and why does diarrhea occur?

Diarrhea is a condition that affects the digestive system, specifically, fecal transit, causing it to accelerate and stools are more frequent and of little consistency.

The causes that produce this symptom usually have their origin in an imbalance between the substances that are absorbed and secreted in the intestine. However, diarrhea is also a very common adverse reaction to many drugs.

Also, infections caused by certain pathogenic microorganisms  can produce this symptom. On the other hand, it is important to know that diarrhea, in general terms, can be classified into two types: acute diarrhea and chronic diarrhea.

As for the first, it affects more than one billion people each year in the world population, especially in developing countries. Its trigger is usually an infection and, normally, it does not require drug treatment, but it reverses itself.

As for chronic diarrhea, this occurs when diarrhea persists after a treatment of two or three weeks. This term is used when a patient suffers from this disease for more than two months, and it can be due to different causes, although the most common is that it is due to a gastrointestinal disease.

What antidiarrheals are there?

Antidiarrheal drugs are given as symptomatic treatment, since diarrhea is a symptom, not a disease itself. In any case, there are general guidelines in the treatment of diarrhea that are based on:

• Rehydration: when a patient suffers from diarrhea, he loses a lot of water and electrolytes that are important to replace.
• Administration of prebiotics : it is very common for the intestinal microbiota to be affected during diarrhea.
• Antidiarrheal drugs  : not always necessary.

The pharmacological treatment of diarrhea will be adjusted according to the intensity, duration and cause of the diarrhea, and are aimed at reducing or suppressing the symptoms of diarrhea. Let’s see, next, some of the most used antidiarrheals.

Activated charcoal or albumin tannate

These are drugs that exert their action in a localized way. Specifically, they act on the inner wall of the large intestine. They are very safe options, with hardly any adverse effects according to studies.

In general, they have little effect on reducing the amount of stool and stool frequency, but they do affect their consistency.

Loperamide

This antidiarrheal affects the tone of the anal sphincter and improves fecal continence. It is, therefore, a drug that affects gastrointestinal motility, slowing it down. This effect improves the reabsorption of water and electrolytes in the intestine, which will result in an increase in the consistency of the stool.

Antibiotics

They are drugs that are not recommended as first-line treatment. The reason for this is that almost all diarrhea is caused by a viral infection, not a bacterial one.

However, if the diarrhea is the cause of a bacterial infection, it is recommended to perform an antibiogram in order to know the sensitivity of the pathogen and, thus, to be able to administer a suitable antibiotic.

An antibiogram is a technique performed in the laboratory, which consists of cultivating an infected sample and treating it with different antibiotics to find out which is more effective.

Conclution

Fortunately, today we have a wide range of antidiarrheals that prevent diarrhea from being one of the main causes of death in developed countries.

To know which antidiarrheal to use, it is essential to know the causes that trigger this annoying symptom. We recommend that you consult your doctor or pharmacist if you have any questions you have about this type of medication.