Lecture 1: Introduction To Pharmacology Flashcards
(44 cards)
What is pharmacology?
The scientific study of the effects of drugs and chemicals on living organisms where a drug can be broadly defined as any chemical substance, natural or synthetic, which affects a biological system. Pharmacology may involve how organisms handle drugs, identification and validation of new targets for drug action, and the design and development of new drugs to prevent, treat and cure disease.
What is pharmacogenetics?
The study of how differences in a gene affect each person’s response to a certain medication. It can help predict how a person will process a medication and provides caution about potential side effects.
What is pharmacogenomics?
A field of research that studies how a person’s genes affect how he or she responds to medications.
What is pharmacoepidemiology?
It may be defined as the study of the utilization and effects of drugs in large numbers of people
What is pharmacoeconomics?
A branch of health economics that usually focuses on balancing the costs and benefits of an intervention towards the use of limited resources.
What are the types of cost in pharmacology? How are they categorized?
- Direct Costs - Medical costs (easy to measure, spent for providing drug therapy); Non-medical costs (associated with treatment but not in medical nature ex. cost of food and lodging)
- Indirect costs: result from loss of earning during hospitalizations
- Intangible costs: difficult to measure like pain, suffering, anxiety during treatment; difficult to quantify in terms of monetary units
What is toxicology? How is it defined?
A field of science that helps us understand the harmful effects that chemicals, substances, or situations, can have on people, animals, and the environment. Some refer to toxicology as the “Science of Safety” because as a field it has evolved from a science
focused on studying poisons and adverse effects of chemical exposures, to a science devoted to studying safety.
What is pharmacotherapeutics?
The application of pharmacological information together with the knowledge of the disease for its prevention, mitigation or cure. Selection of the most appropriate drug, dosage and duration of treatment taking into account the specific features of a patient are a part of Pharmacotherapeutics.
What are adverse reactions?
Defined as any response to a drug that is noxious, unintended and occurs at doses normally used for the prophylaxis, diagnosis or therapy of a disease.
What are adverse effects?
The clinical manifestations of an adverse reaction. Typically they are referred to in commercials as side effects, although a side effect can be beneficial.
How is an allergic reaction defined?
Occurs in a small population. Chracterized by a rapid development following re-exposure to the allergen.
Does adverse effects have an acronym?
No
Does adverse reactions have an acronym?
Yes, ADR
What are drug interactions?
When the effects of one drug is altered by taking a different drug, a health product or with food. The interaction can be positive (duplication of the effect) or negative (antagonism) but can also alter the drug’s action.
What is a common fruit avoided when taking medication?
Grapefruit
What is the definition of tolerance?
The development of resistance to the effects of the drug such that the drug’s dose must be continually raised to elicit the desired response, or a new class of drugs must be used to produce the desired effect.
What is the cumulative effect?
When the body is not able to metabolize and excrete one dose of the drug before the next dose is administered. This can result in cumulative toxicity.
What is antagonism?
When the effects of one drug negate or antagonizes the activity of another.
What is synergism?
The combined action of two or more drugs produces an effect which is greater from using each one of them separately.
What is potentiation?
When one drug does not elicit a response on its own but enhances the response to another drug.
What is additivity?
The effect of taking two or more drugs is equal to the sum of the effect for taking each one individually.
What is the health product classification? What does it look like?
Image on notion, review it there
What is the definition of a drug?
Defined as any substance or product that is used or intended to be used to modify or improve a physiological or a pathological condition. They do not create effect in the body but they do modify physical processes by mimicking or blocking the effects of substances found within the body.
What is the definition of medication?
Refers to the formulation of the drug with other ingredients that improve its stability, taste and physical form to allow appropriate administration of the active drug.
