Introduction To Pharmacology Flashcards
What is pharmacy?
Handling of drugs
What is pharmacology?
Science of drugs
What is toxicology?
Deals with poisons and hazardous effects of therapeutic drugs
What is therapeutics?
Medical use of drugs
What is the typical molecular weight of a drug?
200-1000 Daltons
What are drugs?
Chemicals that bind to molecules in cells
Mimic, stimulate or block the action of endogenous molecules/processes
What are chemotherapeutic drugs?
Agents which act against infectious micro-organisms or cancer cells by exploiting biochemical differences between normal and target cells
What are some common mechanisms by which drugs work?
Enzyme blocker or activator
Ion pump blocker
Receptor modulator or blocker or agonist
Chemotherapeutic agents
What do local anaesthetics do?
Block Na+ channels
What is KD (dissociation constant)?
Concentration of drug required to occupy 50% of the receptors at equilibrium
Related to affinity
What does a low KD tell you about a drug?
High affinity
What is efficacy?
Relates to drug’s ability to activate the receptor to produce a response
OR
How well the drug activates the receptor
What is an agonist?
Ligand that binds and activates a receptor
What is an antagonist?
Ligand that binds to and does not activate a receptor
OR
Drug with affinity but no/zero efficacy
What does AR* mean?
Agonist bound to a receptor producing a response
What does AR mean?
Agonist or antagonist bound to a receptor
What is affinity?
How readily a drug binds to a receptor
What is a full agonist?
Drug with maximum possible efficacy
What is a partial agonist?
Drug with less than maximal efficacy
How does a reversible competitive antagonist affect the dose-response graph?
Parallel shift to right
Size of shift depends on concentration of antagonist
(Blocking by antagonist is surmountable by increasing agonist concentration)
How does an irreversible competitive antagonist affect the dose-response graph?
Suppressed maximal response (not surmountable)
Degree of suppression dependent on antagonist concentration
What does it mean when a drug has high potency?
Effective in small amounts
What could cause a drug to have high potency?
High affinity
High efficacy
Slow metabolic breakdown in body