Pilocarpine - Adverse Effects

Adverse Effects

Use of pilocarpine may result in a range of adverse effects, most of them related to its non-selective action as a muscarinic receptor agonist. Pilocarpine has been known to cause excessive sweating, excessive salivation, bronchospasm, increased bronchial mucus secretion, bradycardia, vasodilation, brow ache (when used as eye drops) and diarrhea. It can also result in miosis when used chronically as an eye drop. Systemic injection of pilocarpine can compromise the blood–brain barrier allowing pilocarpine to gain access to the brain. This can lead to chronic epilepsy.

Epilepsy induced by pilocarpine has been used to develop animal models in rodents in order to study human epilepsy.

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