On Aug 22, 7:24 am, Denny wrote:
I am prescribing Chantix frequently - while Chantix is not the safest
drug ever made, it is head and shoulders better than the risk from
continuing to smoke...

It strongly binds to nicotinic receptors (which is probably a neutral
to the FAA)..
But it moderately binds to 5-HT receptors (which the FAA gets nervous
about)..


It looks like that the drug only moderately binds to the 5-HT3
receptor, and not the other seratonin receptors (at least from a quick
read). Since 5-HT3 isn't G protien coupled, it may be more "approval
friendly?" Or, from what I remember, SSRIs actually don't have a
specific affinity to the 5-HT receptors, but that the antagonism of
the receptors is hypothesized to be a side effect of other protien
bindings. shrug

As a side note, thanks for the info, I'll ask my doc about it...