B6-preventing And Treating Disease Flashcards
What happens if a pathogen enters the body?
The immune system tries to destroy the pathogen
What does vaccination involve?
Introducing small amounts of dead or inactive forms of a pathogen into your body to stimulate the white blood cells to produce antibodies. If the same live pathogen re-enters the body, the white blood cells respond quickly to produce the correct antibodies preventing infection
What is herd immunity
If a large proportion of the population is immune to a pathogen, the spread of the pathogen is much reduced.
What do painkillers and other medicines do?
They treat the symptoms of disease but do not kill the pathogens that cause it
What do antibiotics do?
They cure bacterial diseases by killing the bacterial pathogens inside your body.
They use of antibiotics has greatly reduced deaths from infectious diseases
What is a concern about antibiotics
Antibiotic resistance( bacteria become resistant to antibiotics)
Why do antibiotics not destroy viruses?
Because viruses reproduce inside the cells it is difficult to develop drugs that can destroy viruses without damaging your body cells.
Where were drugs extracted from traditionally?
Plants for example digitalis
Or from microorganisms for example penicillin
Who discovered penicillin
Alexander Fleming from the penicillium mould
How are most new drugs found
Most new drugs are synthesised by chemicals in the pharmaceutical industry. However, the starting point may still be a chemical extracted from a plant
What is a good medicine?
Effective- must prevent or cure a disease or w t least make you feel better
Safe- the drug must not be too toxic or have unacceptable side effects for the patient
Stable- you must be able to use the medicine under normal conditions and store it for some time.
Successfully taken into and removed from your body- it must reach its target and be cleared from your system once it has done its work.
Where are new drugs tested?
In the laboratory using cells, tissues and live animals
What is used in preclinical testing?
Who is used in clinical trials
Cells, tissues and live animals
Healthy volunteers and patients. Low does are used to test for safety followed by huger roses to test for optimum dose
In double blind trials some patients are given what?
A placebo
What are monoclonal antibodies produced from?
From one single clone of cells. Each type is specific to one binding site on a specific protein antigen so they can target specific cells in the body or specific chemicals.
