Pharmacokinetics I Flashcards
What is pharmacokinetics?
how the body deals with the drug
the quantitative description of the rates of the various steps of drug disposition
What are the paths of drug absorption?
fill in
How does a drug move across cellular barriers?
Passive transport:
- paracellular transport
- diffusion
Active transport:
- facilitated diffusion
- drug transporters
What are the paths of drug absorption?
- enteral (sublingual, oral, rectal)
- parenteral (subcutaenous, intramuscular, IV, spinal)
- topical (percutaenous (i.e., skin), inhalation)
What are drug characteristics affecting drug absorption?
- lipid solubility
- molecular size & weight (larger, not going to be absorbed as well)
- pKa
What are tissue characteristics affecting drug absorption?
- membrane permeability (charged substance won’t cross, uncharged will)
- pH
- membrane thickness
- local blood flow
- local anatomy (i.e., surface area)
- transport mechanisms
What are four methods of permeation movement of drugs through body?
- aqueous diffusion (passive process governed by Fick’s law)
- lipid diffusion (passive process governed by Fick’s law)
- transport by special carriers (NOT governed by Fick’s law and is capacity limited)
- endocytosis, pinocytosis (NOT governed by Fick’s law)
What is Fick’s Law of Diffusion?
predicts the rate of movement of molecules across a barrier
Rate = (C1 - C2) * (Permeability Coefficient/Thickness) * Area C1 = concentration on side of administration C2 = concentration on other side
What is bioavailability?
the fraction of drug absorbed into the systemic circulation
Intravenous better than oral
Bioavailability (F) = AUC(route)/AUC(i.v.) * 100
Passive diffusion
drugs move down their concentration gradient
J = -DAdeltaC/deltax
J = net flux D = diffusion coefficient A = area available for diffusion deltaC = concentration gradient deltax = membrane thickness
What can affect drug absorption?
- alteration of pH
- complexation
- alteration of GI motility
- interference with absorption
Drug pKa - most drugs are what types of acids/bases?
most drugs are either weak acids, weak bases, or are amphoteric
Aspirin is a weak acid (pKa = 3.5); is it readily absorbed?
yes
What does a drug’s pKa indicate?
a drug’s pKa value represents the pH at which 50% of the molecules in solution are ionized
- acids are increasingly ionized in a basic environment
- bases are increasingly ionized in an acid environment
What is pharmacodynamics?
How a drug acts on the body to produce biological changes
What must be considered in pharmacokinetics?
- dose given
- route of administration
- how well drug distributes throughout body
- how drug can be chemically altered by enzymes
- how drug is eliminated
What are the two principal organs of elimination?
- liver
- kidneys
*other organs play a more minor role including lungs, skin, GI tract, etc.
What organ is most often responsible for drug metabolism?
liver
*after metabolism, the modified drugs can return to the blood to be excreted by the kidneys, or can be secreted into the bile and eliminated by the GI tract
What organ is the primary site for excretion of a drug?
kidneys
What organ is an important route for eliminating volatile chemicals?
the lungs
*ex: gaseous anesthetics