B6 Flashcards
What is vaccination?
Where small amounts of a dead or inactive pathogen re put into your body, often by injection. The antigens stimulate your white blood cells into making antibodies which destroy the antigens. This means you are immune to future injections as the white blood cells will remember how to make the antibodies so can respond quicker.
What is herd immunity?
Where is a large proportion of the population is immune to a pathogen, the spread of the pathogen is much reduced. However it takes lots of money due to costs of vaccinations.
What happens if a pathogen enters the body?
The immune system will try to destroy the pathogen.
How do you treat the symptoms of a pathogen?
You can take drugs as painkillers, which do not have any effect on the viruses that have entered your tissues, making you feel ill.
What are antibiotics?
They are drugs that work inside your body to kill pathogens.
How do antibiotics work?
They damage the bacterial cells without harming your own cells. They can be taken in many ways but are most effective injected into your blood stream so it makes sure they reach the pathogen as soon as possible. Some are specific and some are not.
Why are antibiotics bad?
They cannot kill viral pathogens as they reproduce inside your cells and it is hard to make drugs that will kill them and not your cells. There are also strains of bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics, so the antibiotic that used to work may not.
Where is digitalis extracted from?
Foxgloves, this drug strengthens the heart beat.
Where is aspirin extracted from?
The bark of willow trees, and is still used to treat a wide range of health issues.
How was penicillin discovered?
It was found by Alexander Fleming who left an agar plate open with bacteria in it and something killed it after he went on holiday. He names this substance penicillin.
How are new drugs produced?
They are synthesised by chemists in the pharmaceutical industry but may still need to be extracted from a plant.
What are the 4 things a good medicine needs to be?
Effective-must prevent or cure a disease, safe-it must not be too toxic or have many side effects, stable-you must be able to use the medicine under normal conditions and be able to store it and be able to be successfully taken into and removed from your body.
How are new drugs tested?
They identify the target and make lots of possible new drugs which are tested if they are safe and efficient. They then are taken to test on animals which can show dosage and side effects in preclinical testing. They then move onto clinical trials with healthy volunteers to show side effects. They then test it on diseased people to see about efficiency and will be licenced and up for sale.
What are double blind trials?
Some patients being given a placebo to see how efficient the new medicine is.
How are monoclonal antibodies produced?
Lymphocytes make specific antibodies but do not divide and they can be produced from mice. They also get tumour cells that do not make antibodies but divide. They are then combined and it makes a hybridoma cell. These are then cloned and the monoclonal antibodies are separated, purified and can be used.
