Drug testing Flashcards
Where are medicines extracted from?
Plants
Trees
Microorganisms
Where was the heart drug digitalis extracted from?
Fox glove
Where was aspirin (painkiller) extracted from?
Willow trees
Where was penicillin extracted from?
The mould penicillium
What do we need to make sure drugs are?
Effective to treat the disease
Toxicity is low
Dosage of the drug
First stage of testing
Pre clinical testing
What happens in preclinical testing?
The drug is tested on:
Cells
Tissue
Live animals
Simulated on a computer
Why is pre clinical testing not involving humans?
It could be very toxic
First stage of clinical testing
Low dosages of drug to small number of HEALTHY volunteers
= check it’s safe for humans
After the first stage of clinical testing what do we need to find?
The optimum dose to treat the disease but with minimum side effects
Second stage of clinical testing
Double blind trial on patients with target disease
Double blind trial
The test group receives an active drug
The control group receives placebo drug as a control
Neither doctor nor patient know which drug is placebo or not
Placebo
A tablet that looks like the real drug but has no active ingredient in it
Makes patient think they are getting better so they actually might
Why use a double blind test?
To avoid bias on doctors end as they could pay closer attention to those with the real drug
3rd stage of drug trials
Regulatory board to peer review data given
Can send you back a few stages
