b6 slide 3 (last slide) Flashcards
What is a drug?
Any chemical that causes chemical changes in the body.
What are most drugs used for?
Most drugs are medical – used to treat disease.
What is an antibiotic?
Type of drug that treats bacterial disease by killing pathogenic bacteria.
What is an antiretroviral?
Type of drug that can kill viruses: these are used to treat infection by HIV.
What is a painkiller?
Drug that only treats the symptoms of disease, rather than killing pathogens.
What are symptoms?
Problems with the body arising from disease and indicating that there is a disease.
E.g. coughing, headaches, vomiting.
What does toxicity mean?
From ‘toxic’, toxicity means how harmful a drug is to healthy body tissues.
What is efficacy?
How well a drug actually treats the disease it is designed to treat.
What is dose?
How much of a drug is given to a patient, and how many times a day and so on.
