chemistry

Voriconazole

Voriconazole is a chemistry topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Voriconazole rather than just read about it. In short: Voriconazole, sold under the brand name Vfend among others, is an antifungal medication used to treat a number of fungal infections. This includes aspergillosis, candidiasis, coccidioidomycosis, histoplasmosis, penicilliosis, and infections by Scedosporium or Fusarium.

Key takeaways

Voriconazole belongs to chemistry; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Voriconazole to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Voriconazole from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Voriconazole, sold under the brand name Vfend among others, is an antifungal medication used to treat a number of fungal infections. This includes aspergillosis, candidiasis, coccidioidomycosis, histoplasmosis, penicilliosis, and infections by Scedosporium or Fusarium. It can be taken by mouth or used by injection into a vein. Common side effects include vision problems, nausea, abdominal pain, rash, headache, and hallucinations. Use during pregnancy may result in harm to the fetus. It is in the triazole family of medications., and works by affecting fungal metabolism and fungal cell membranes. Voriconazole was patented in 1990 and approved for medical use in the United States in 2002. It is on the World Health Organization's List of Essential Medicines.

Medical uses Voriconazole is used to treat invasive aspergillosis and candidiasis and fungal infections caused by Scedosporium and Fusarium species, which may occur in immunocompromised patients, including people undergoing allogeneic bone marrow transplant (BMT), who have hematologic cancers or who undergo organ transplants. It is also used to prevent fungal infection in people as they undergo BMT. It is also the recommended treatment for the CNS fungal infections transmitted by epidural injection of contaminated steroids. It can be taken by mouth or given in a doctor's office or clinic by intravenous infusion.

Contraindications Voriconazole is toxic to the fetus, and thus not used in pregnant women, or women who may become pregnant. People with hereditary intolerance for galactose, Lapp lactase deficiency, or glucose-galactose malabsorption should not take this drug. It should be used cautiously in people with arrhythmias or a long QTc interval. No dose adjustment is necessary for renal impairment or advanced age, but children seem to clear voriconazole faster than adults, and drug levels may need monitoring.

Side effects The labels carry several warnings of the risk of injection site reactions, hypersensitivity reactions; kidney, liver, and pancreas damage; trouble with vision; and adverse effects in skin including damage due to phototoxicity, squamous cell skin cancer, and Stevens–Johnson syndrome; in long-term use there is a warning of the risk of bone fluorosis and periostitis especially in elderly patients. Additionally, very common adverse effects, occurring in more than 10% of people, include peripheral edema, headaches, trouble breathing, diarrhea, vomiting, abdominal pain, nausea, rashes, and fever. Common adverse effects, occurring in between 1 and 10% of people, include sinus infections, low numbers of white and red blood cells (agranulocytosis, pancytopenia, thrombocytopenia, leukopenia, and anemia), low blood sugar, reduced amount of potassium and sodium, depression, hallucinations, anxiety, insomnia, agitation, confusion, convulsions, fainting, tremor, weakness, tingling, sleepiness, dizziness, bleeding retina, irregular heart beats, slow or fast heart beats, low blood pressure, inflamed veins, acute respiratory distress syndrome, pulmonary edema, inflamed lips, swollen face, stomach upset, constipation, gingivitis, jaundice, hair loss, flaky skin, itchiness, red skin, back pain, chest pain, and chills. In November 2024, International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified hydrochlorothiazide, voriconazole and tacrolimus as group 1 carcinogens.

Interactions Being metabolized by hepatic cytochrome P450, voriconazole interacts with many drugs. Voriconazole should not be used in conjunction with many drugs (including sirolimus, rifampicin, rifabutin, carbamazepine, quinidine and ergot alkaloids) and dose adjustments and/or monitoring should be done when coadministered with others (including fluconazole, warfarin, ciclosporin, tacrolimus, omeprazole, and phenytoin). Voriconazole may be safely administered with cimetidine, ranitidine, indinavir, macrolide antibiotics, mycophenolate, digoxin and prednisolone.

Pharmacology

Pharmacokinetics Voriconazole is well absorbed orally with a bioavailability of 96%, allowing patients to be switched between intravenous and oral administration.

History Pfizer brought the drug to market as Vfend. A generic version of the tablet form of voriconazole was introduced in the US in 2011 after Pfizer and Mylan settled litigation under the Hatch-Waxman Act; a generic version of the injectable form was introduced in 2012. In Europe, patent protection expired in 2011, and pediatric administrative exclusivity expired in 2016.

Society and culture

Brand names As of July 2017, the medication is marketed under the following names worldwide: Cantex, Pinup, Vedilozin, Vfend, Vodask, Volric, Voramol, Voriconazol, Voriconazole, Voriconazolum, Voricostad, Vorikonazol, Voritek, Voriz, Vornal, and Vosicaz.

References

Further reading Dean L (December 2019). "Voriconazole Therapy and CYP2C19 Genotype". In Pratt VM, McLeod HL, Rubinstein WS, et al. (eds.). Medical Genetics Summaries. National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI). PMID 31886997.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Voriconazole

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Voriconazole claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In chemistry, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Voriconazole before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Voriconazole ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Voriconazole

In research: Voriconazole appears in chemistry research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Voriconazole in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Voriconazole is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 2,4-Difluorophenyl compounds, CYP2B6 inhibitors, CYP2C19 inhibitors, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Voriconazole outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Voriconazole in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Voriconazole means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Voriconazole out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Voriconazole in simple terms?

Why does Voriconazole matter?

Because it connects several chemistry ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Voriconazole?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Voriconazole.