Week 1 Flashcards
(67 cards)
1
Q
What are medicines?
A
Medicines are substances used to diagnose, treat, cure, prevent, or relieve symptoms of diseases
2
Q
In Australia, medicines are available as?
A
Prescription medicines, OTC medicines and complementary medicines
3
Q
What are the routes of administration of medicines?
A
Orally, injectables, topicals, inhalation, sublingual, buccal, rectal and vaginal means
4
Q
What are pharmacodynamics?
A
What the drug does to the body
5
Q
What is pharmacokinetics?
A
What the body does to the drug
6
Q
What is the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA)?
A
The TGA regulates medicines, ensuring their safety, efficacy, and quality before they reach consumers.
7
Q
Scheduling of Medicines:
A
S2, S3, S4, S8
8
Q
What is S2 Pharmacy Medicines?
A
Can be sold in pharmacies without prescription (e.g. ibruprofen)
9
Q
What is S3 (pharmacist only medicine?
A
requires a pharmacist consultation but no prescription (e.g. short courses of salbutamol inhalers)
10
Q
What is S4 (prescription only medicines?)
A
requires a valid prescription e.g. antibiotics
11
Q
What is S8 (controlled drugs?)
A
medicines with high potential for misuse e.g. opioids
12
Q
What is the PBS?
A
The PBS subsidises many prescription medicines, making them more affordable for patients.
Health professionals should understand PBS item codes, restrictions, and authority prescriptions (although this is not covered in this course).
13
Q
What are the principles of QUM?
A
- Selecting the right medicine for the right patient.
- Ensuring appropriate dosage, duration, and administration.
- Monitoring for effectiveness and side effects.
- Preventing medication errors and adverse drug reactions (ADRs).
14
Q
What does QUM stand for?
A
Quality Use of Medicines
15
Q
What are cautionary advisory labels? “CALs”
A
Pharmacists apply CALs to medicines to provide additional safety warnings (e.g., “May cause drowsiness” for opioids).
16
Q
What are some examples of medication safety in practice?
A
- Use of electronic prescribing (e.g., eRx, MyHR integration).
- Importance of medication reconciliation in hospital transitions.
- Recognising and reporting adverse drug reactions (ADRs) to the TGA.
17
Q
What are some key medicine classes and their uses?
A
- Analgesics (Pain relief) – Paracetamol, ibuprofen, opioids
- Antibiotics (Infections) – Amoxicillin, doxycycline
- Antihypertensives (Blood pressure) – ACE inhibitors, beta-blockers
- Antidiabetics (Diabetes) – Metformin, insulin
- Psychotropic Medicines (Mental health) – SSRIs, benzodiazepines
- Respiratory Medicines (Asthma, COPD) – Salbutamol, corticosteroids
18
Q
What are some special populations to consider with medications?
A
- Children (dosing considerations, liquid formulations)
- Elderly (polypharmacy, altered drug metabolism)
- Pregnant & breastfeeding women (teratogenic risks, category classification)
19
Q
What are some ways drugs are classified?
A
mechanism of action, therapeutic use, chemical structure and legal classification
20
Q
What is the mechanism of action?
A
How the drug works in the body
21
Q
What is the mechanism of action of beta blockers?
A
reduce heart rate by blocking beta adrenergic receptors
22
Q
What is the therapeutic use of a drug?
A
the condition the drug treats
23
Q
What is the therapeutic use of antihypertensives?
A
to lower blood pressure
24
Q
What is the chemical structure of a drug?
A
The molecular composition of a drug
25
What is the chemical structure of penicilin?
share a beta lactam ring structure
26
What is the legal classification of a drug?
how the drug is regulated
27
What is the legal classification of controlled substances?
are regulated due to their potential for abuse
28
what is a drug expiry date?
An expiry date marks the point when a pharmaceutical product no longer meets acceptable potency and stability specifications. It is determined through stability studies that assess chemical and physical changes over time.
29
What are factors affecting drug stability?
chemical stability, temperature sensitivity, hydrolysis, oxidation, photodegradation and excipient interactions
30
Storage and refrigeration of drugs?
Refrigeration (2–8°C) is required for some drugs (e.g., vaccines, insulin) to prevent decomposition.
Some medicines must be discarded a set number of days after opening to avoid microbial contamination (e.g., eye drops: 30 days, amoxicillin suspension: 14 days).
In the Australian climate, proper transport conditions are crucial to maintain stability, particularly for refrigerated products.
31
What is pharmacology?
The study of drugs and their effects in the body.
Indications, mechanism of action, adverse effects and interactions
32
Why is pharmacology important?
Knowing how drugs work allows you to:
- Make informed decisions about appropriateness of therapy
- Understand and recognise adverse effects of medicines
- Explore interactions between drugs and disease states
- Make the right choices when treating your patients
When working n healthcare, you need to know how medicines work
33
What is a drug?
Any chemical agent that affects the way the body functions whether that be physically or mentally
“a molecule that interacts with a specific molecular component (the drug target) of an organism to cause biochemical and physiologic changes within that organism”
34
What are pharmacokinetics?
“what the body does to the drug”
Absorption into the blood stream
Distribution in body
Metabolism of drug metabolites
Excretion from body
35
What are pharmacodynamics?
‘what the drug does to the body’
Mechanisms of action
Physiological effect
36
What are the physical natures of a drug?
solid, liquid or gas
37
relative lipid solubility of drugs
small, lipophilic drugs cross lipid membranes easily
38
molecular size of drugs
Varies widely
- Small ions to large chains
- Low molecular weight (<500g/mol) v high molecular weight (>500g/mol)
Affects ability to diffuse across compartments
Affects administration route
39
What molecules can cross the BBB?
Only small lipophilic (hydrophobic) molecules cross the blood brain barrier (BBB)
40
Molecular shape of a drug
* Drug needs to fit into target to have effect in body
* Drugs and their targets are 3D structures
41
Biological activity of a drug
* Drugs interact with their targets by chemical bonds or forces
* Change chemical groups
* Change biological effects
* Drug development: SAR
42
What is an ideal drug?
binds to one receptor, in one tissue, one single effect
43
What is selectivity in drugs?
drugs bind preferentially to the target and are less likely to bind to the other molecules in the body (act in multiple tissues, and act in multiple ways across the body, and this is why medicines often have lots of side effects)
44
What are the two broad types of drugs?
small molecules and biopharmaceuticals
45
what are small molecules?
classic drug molecules, produced by chemical synthesis
46
What are biopharmaceuticals?
large biological agents, produced in living cells (often talking about proteins)
47
What are some examples of biopharmaceuticals?
Proteins – hormones, monoclonal antibodies, vaccines
Stem cells
Gene therapy
48
What are antibodies?
are proteins made by the immune system to target a specific protein
49
What are monoclonal antibodies? (mAbs)
are made in a lab to target one binding site on a single antigen = very selective
50
What is a drug target?
“a molecule in the body or other organism, usually a protein, which a drug binds to and which then mediates biochemical and physiological changes”
51
Drug target - ion channel, what is it important in?
* Neurotransmission
* Cardiac conduction
* Muscle contraction
* Secretory processes
52
drug target - GPCRs
* Transmembrane receptors
* Activate intracellular signalling molecules known as G proteins
* Most abundant receptors in the body
* Fast effects (seconds)
53
drug target - transmembrane receptors with linked enzymatic domains
* Ligand binding leads to activation of enzymatic domain
* Slower effect (hours)
* Several groups: largest are the tyrosine kinase receptors (TKRs)
54
drug target - intracellular receptors
* Small lipophilic signalling molecules can diffuse through the plasma membrane
* Bind to the DNA and alter gene transcription
* Slow effects (hours)
55
Drug target - enzymes
* Catalysts in the body
* Drugs usually inhibit the activity of the enzyme rather than activating the enzyme
* Drugs can inhibit enzyme in several different ways, it depends on where the drug binds to the enzyme. If the drug binds on the active site this is known as competitive inhibition, and if the drug binds on a different site, this is called noncompetitive inhibition
56
partial agonists
- Molecules that bind to a receptor and produce only a partial response
- Partial agonists bind to all the different types of receptors but it is not able to activate all of them, it only activates a portion of them.
57
What is an endogenous ligand?
the endogenous ligands of the normal molecule, binds to the receptor it activates the receptor, and this leads to some sort of biological effect
58
What is an agonist?
. An agonist is a drug that binds to a receptor and activates the receptor (mimics the effect of the endogenous ligand)
59
What is an antagonist?
antagonists which bind to the receptor and block the effects of the endogenous ligand/ agonist.
60
What is the therapeutic window?
- range of doses that elicits a therapeutic response, without unacceptable adverse effects
* Essentially guides us to the appropriate dose of a drug and it explains the range of doses that can be given to a person to produce the desired effect without causing toxicity/ adverse effects
61
What does ADME Stand for?
Absorption, distribution, metabolism, excretion/ elimination
62
Absorption of drugs
* Process of crossing barriers to get into blood (intravenous drugs don’t need to undergo absorption as they are injected directly into the blood)
* Considerations:
* route of administration of the drug
* rate (time might be important (GI tract), slow-release formulation
* how much of the drug is absorbed?
63
Distribution of a drug
* Affected by the body and the drug – chemical properties of the drug – lipopholiticty, ionisation, size
* Physiological factors of the body – rate of delivery of blood to tissue, binding of drug to plasma and tissues
* Affects how long the drug stays in the body – if drug mainly distributes into tissues it’s more slowly eliminated
64
Metabolism of a drug
Metabolism of drugs occurs mainly at the liver
Mostly carried out by enzymes
Metabolism is a process of elimination
65
Elimination of a drug
Can happen via both metabolism and excretion
Process of irreversible removal of drug from the body
- Via kidneys (into urine)
- Or liver (through bile then excreted into faeces)
66
Excretion of a drug
Usually via the kidneys
- (1) kidneys remove drug from body by filtration
- (2) drugs can be actively secreted (removes drug from body)
- (3) filtrate becomes more concentrated with filtered drug, some drug can be reabsorbed
- (4) drug remaining in filtrate will be excreted
67
What is a half life?
the time taken for 50% of the drug to be eliminated from the body
