Racecadotril: An Effective Anti-Diarrheal Drug

Acute diarrhoea, although tends to be a self-limiting disease in otherwise healthy people, continues to cause millions of deaths every year, particularly in infants and the elderly. Therefore it represents a very frequent medical problem with a significant societal impact such as health-care utilisation and lost working days by caregivers. Dehydration, the most frequent and severe complication occurs in the first 48 hours from the onset of the disease. For this reason, the WHO considers this time frame the more critical period where we should mostly act. Oral rehydration solution is the most important component of treatment to avoid dehydration, but despite its proven effectiveness it is still rarely used because of low compliance mainly due to the subjective perception of poor effectiveness, as it does not reduce stools frequency, nor loss of intestinal liquids, neither the length of diarrhoea. Racecadotril represents, so far, the unique drug acting on one of the main pathophysiological mechanisms underlying acute diarrhoea. In this book some experts discussed the main international diarrheal guidelines in children and adults even analysing the health costs of the disease. Other authors have thoroughly addressed the etiopathological mechanisms underlying acute diarrhoea and some others have fully analysed the clinical studies on Racecadotril present in the literature both in children and adults. In addition, the worlds leading experts on Racecadotril have thoroughly clarified the drugs pharmacological mechanisms and have wonderfully summarized its safety profile. Finally we analysed the cost-effectiveness of the drug based on the studies published so far, which confirm that Racecadotril can be a cost-saving drug in treating acute diarrhoea because it can facilitate the home-management of the disease. All things considered, we can say that Racecadotril is an effective and safe anti-diarrheal drug that can reduce the associated health care costs by increasing the likelihood of resolving the disease in outpatient setting.