pharmacology 1 Flashcards
What is pharmacology?
the branch of medicine concerned with the uses, effects, and modes of action of drugs
- Their design and synthesis
- Measurement of the effects of drugs and their mechanisms
- Absorption
- Metabolism
- Excretion
What is pharmacy?
the science or practice of the preparation and dispensing of medicinal drugs
handling drugs
- Preparing
- Preserving
- Compounding
- Dispensing of drugs
What are therapeutics?
the branch of medicine concerned with the treatment of disease and the action of remedial agents
Medicinal use of drugs
- how drugs can be used as remedies for diseases
- how drugs can be used to ameliorate symptoms of disease
What is toxicology?
The branch of medicine concerned with the nature, effects and detection of poisons
Unwanted drug effects
- toxic effects of drugs
- actions of poisons
- unwanted effects of therapeutic drugs that are hazardous
What is a drug? Examples of therapeutic and abused drugs.
A chemically defined agent that can be used to provoke a measurable response in a biological system.
What is a drug molecule?
Drugs are exogenous molecules that mimic or block the action of endogenous molecules of systems
Although derived from an exogenous source a given drug may be:
- chemically identical to an endogenous molecule or
- chemically distinct from any known endogenous molecule
What is exogenous and endogenous?
exogenous= growing or originating from outside an organism
endogenous= growing or originating from within an organism.
Concept of receptor
Receptors have specific BINDING SITES for a drug
Physiological receptors
These are endogenous proteins that are the receptors for endogenous chemical signaling compounds such as hormones or neurotransmitters. Many drugs bind to such receptors
Give examples of other proteins (pharmacological receptors)
Such as enzymes or ion channels; drugs may bind to specific sites on proteins and prevent them from doing their job or, less commonly, they may stimulate them e.g. an ion channel in a membrane may be ‘blocked’ or it maybe opened.
Nucleic acids (pharmacological receptors)
Drugs may bind to regulatory sites on nucleic acids to influence gene expression or protein synthesis.
What are agonists and antagonists drugs?
Agonists: drugs that occupy receptors and activate them
Antagonists: Drugs that occupy receptors but do not activate them
What determines the primary effects of the drug?
The type of binding site
nature of interaction of drug and binding site on receptor
What are reversible and irreversible drug interactions?
reversible: interactions between drug and receptor binding site mediated by ionic attractions or hydrophobic interactions
irreversible: interactions between drug and receptor binding site mediated by covalent bonds.
What is pharmacodynamics?
What a drug does to an organism- the sum of all actions of a drug