Chapter 1 Flashcards
What is psychopharmacology
Study of how drugs affect mood, perception, thinking, or behavior
What is a psychoactive drug
Any drug that acts on the CNS
Importance of psychopharmacology
- Prevalence of psycho active drugs, for example, caffeine and mood enhancer drugs
- informs research
- Pharmacotherapy
What is a drug
- administered substances that affect physiological functioning
Instrumental drug use
Use to accomplish specific purposes
For example, taking caffeine to wake up
Therapeutic drugs
Used for treating disorders ( instrumental use)
For example, taking Xanax to reduce anxiety
Recreational use
Used to experience drug effects,
for example, taking Xanax just because
Trade name of a drug
Trademarked and assigned by company,
For example, Tylenol
Generic name
Classifies drug in a category.
For example, acetaminophen
Chemical name
Details chemical structure
Street names
Used by folks who make or sell drugs recreationally
Drug effect dependent on
Dose
What is a dose
The amount of drug ingested per body weight.
What are Dose effect curves
They depict the magnitude of drug’s effect at a given dose.
Used to visualize effective or toxic dosage.
ED50 what is effective dosage
This is the dosage of drug at which 50% of the population experiences the intended effect of the drug.
Drug potency
Determined through ED50.
How much of a drug is needed to achieve a certain effect
What is toxic dose
When certain drug levels produce adverse side effects
TD50
When 50% of a population has an adverse reaction to a drug at a certain dose.
Therapeutic index
- calculated using TD50
- difference between toxic and Thera dose by comparing drug dose effect curves for toxicity versus therapeutic effect
- ratio of TD50 to ED50
Certain safety index
Used by reg. agencies or companies
TD1 to ED99 ratio
Favors therapeutic effects
Do not apply to all drugs, for example, lithium.
what is pharmacology
branch of medicine concerned with uses, effects and modes of actions of drugs
pharmacodynamics
physiological action of drugs, what is going on at synapse
pharmacokinetics
how drugs pass and are eliminated from body
pharmacogenetics
study of how genetic differences influence both pharmacodynamics and pharmacokinetics
- help us understand differences in drug responses betweeen individuals
objective drug effects
observed by others
subjective drug effects
not directly observed
correlational study
no alterations of conditions, observation (purely)
experimental study
alter independent variable
quasi-experimental research
manipulation of an independent variable without the random assignment of participants to conditions or orders of conditions.
- has higher internal validity
internal validity
adequacy of controlling variables that may influence a dependent variable
treatment arms
treatment groups in clinical studies
placebo treatments
control groups
single blind drug study
only participant is blind to it
double blind drug study
both participants and researchers are blind
open label
no one is blind to anything in the study
why animals are used?
- no viable alternatives
- high predictive value (ability to predict treatment effects)
institution in charge of animal use
Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC)
ETHICAL COST
assessmet that weighs value of research agaisnt potential pain and distress to be expereinced by subjects
three R’s by IACUC
replace, reduce, refinest
stages of therapeutic drug development (humans)
identify disorder
synthesize drug
biological experimentation (high thought screening)
screening (focused testing with promising compounds)
safety pharmacology (test adverse effect)
clinical trials
clinical trials phase
1 determine drug adverse effect on healthy volunteers
phase 2
determine drug effectiveness
cost/ benefit analysis here
participants with diosreder tested
phase 3
further effectieveness check
more people add to testing sample people with co-existing conditions
phase 4
FDA approval, address final question, more research
