Intro to Pharmacology Lecture Flashcards
5/31/19
Pharmacology
Study of drugs
Drug
Chemical utilized for a diagnosis, prevention, cure, or amelioration of an unwanted health condition, any chemical, excluding food, that interacts with living organisms to produce a response (beneficial or harmful)
Branches of pharmacology
- Therapeutics ***we will mainly focus here
- Toxicology
- Pharmacodynamics
- Pharmacokinetics
- Pharmacogenomics: personalized/precision medicine
Example of pharmacogenetics
Some patients have variants in liver enzyme CYP2D9 that degrades the anticoagulent warfarin, if it metabolizes warfarin slowly, it accumulates and increases bleeding - now we can genetically test to determine this variation and respond with specific drugs accordingly
Pharmacology vs pharmacy
Pharmacology is the science of interaction of chemicals with living organisms or systems to develop and use medicines to cure, prevent, or ease disease
Pharmacy is a health profession concerned with appropriate use of medications, devices, and services, largely concerned with art of preparing and dispensing drugs, link between pharmacology and the patient
Major drug legislation in the US
- 1906 pure food and drug act
- 1938 federal food, drug, and cosmetic act established the FDA
- 1951 Durham humphrey amendments create prescription and OTCs
- 1962 thalidomide crisis in UK caused limbless babies, amendment established that before drugs be marketed must be shown to be safe and efficacious
- 1970 Controlled substance act established DEA to monitor drugs with potential for abuse (schedule1-5 drugs)
- 1983 Orphan Drug Amendments creates incentives development of drugs that treat rare diseases
Phases of drug development
- Preclinical testing on laboratory animals
- Phase I small # of volunteers
- Phase II assess effectiveness of treating target disorder
- Phase III assess larger patient population
- NDA approval
- Phase IV postmarketing surveillance to monitor problems occurring after NDA approval
Cost of drug development
Very expensive and time consuming, for every 5000 compounds 1 will be approved by the FDA after 12 years and $800 million dollars
Drug naming convention
Chemical name: organic chemistry structure
Generic name: shortened name
Trade name: license name by drug company
Advantages of OTC’s
- Effective
- Freely available
- Inexpensive
- Save consumer money/physician time
- Relatively safe, dosage fairly universal
- instructions simple
Disadvantages of OTC’s
- Have to lower strength when going from prescription to OTC
- Greatly overused
- Greatly misused
Sources of drugs
- plant products
- minerals
- animals
- synthetic
a.c.
Before meals
b.i.d.
twice a day
p.o.
orally
