Exam 1: Introduction Flashcards
Know the proper grammatical use of drug trade names versus the official name of the drug; including capitalization rules and the use of trademark symbols.
Official name is nonproprietary and not capitalized
Trade name is proprietary and capitalized
Registered trademark symbol ® means that the company has the exclusive legal right to use that trademark
Unregistered trademark symbol ™ means limited legal status but notifies the public the companies considers this name as their property
Contrast potency versus efficacy in terms of the therapeutic utility of a drug
Potency is how much of a drug is needed to be effective
Efficacy is the effectiveness of a drug (the ability of a drug to control or cure an illness); the maximal response that can be elicited by a drug
Why might different injectable formulations exist for the same drug? Likewise, for different oral formulations.
Different formulations can have different characteristics. The purpose of an injectable formulation is to change the water solubility and its absorption characteristics
Contrast the relative speed of onset for a drug with receptors located within the nucleus of a cell versus the cell membrane/enzyme/2nd messenger
The speed of onset for the cell membrane/enzyme/2nd messenger is rapid. The speed on onset for nucleus level drugs is slower because new proteins need to be created
Explain how the concentration of a drug at the receptor site and the affinity of the drug for that receptor affects the magnitude of the effect of a competitive agonist or a competitive antagonist
The magnitude of the effect is dependent on the amount of drug present and the affinity constant (rate of binding and release) of that drug for the receptor
Affinity is how tightly the drug attaches to the receptor. The tighter the attachment, the longer the effect
Explain what a noncompetitive antagonist is and how it differs from a competitive antagonist in its ability to override an agonist of the same receptor
Noncompetitive antagonist permanently bind to the receptor and a new receptor must be created to inactivate it
Competitive antagonists do not permanently bind to a receptor. There is a constant release and reattachment
Regarding drug interactions, what do the following terms imply: synergy, antagonism, and additive effects?
Synergy is when one increases the effect of the other
Antagonism is when one drug decreases the effect, or antagonizes, the other
Additive is together they can cover everything, but one does not influence the other
Assuming a “normal distribution”, state the percentage of that population that would be expected to be encompassed by 1, 2, and 3 standard deviations from the mean response.
1 standard deviation is 68.2%, 2 standard deviations is 95.4%, and 3 standard deviations is 99.7% of the population
Explain why the concentration of a drug might be stated in “units per ml” rather than “mg per ml”.
They use units per ml when there is difficulty creating potency between batches at the manufacturer
