Pharmacology Flashcards
What are the three categories of drug interactions?
- Physiochemical
- Pharmacodynamic
- Pharmacokinetic
What are physiochemical interactions?
Where the drugs directly react with each other independent of being in the body.
What are the four types of physiochemical interactions?
- Adsorption
- Precipitation
- Chelation
- Neutralisation
What are pharmacodynamics?
The effect that the drug has on the body.
What are the four types of pharmacodynamic drug interactions?
- Summative (1+1=2)
- Synergistic (1+1>2)
- Antagonistic (1+1<2)
- Potentiation (1+1=1+1.5)
What are pharmacokinetics?
What the body does with a drug.
What four actions does the body take on a drug?
- Absorption
- Distribution
- Metabolism
- Excretion
What physiological processes/features effect absorption of drugs?
- Gut motility
- Acidity
What is bioavailability?
The fraction of an administered dose of unchanged drug that reaches the systemic circulation.
Where are the three places a drug in a blood vessel can travel?
- Attach to a protein
- Site of intended administration
- Other sites/tissue
What enzyme is morphine metabolised by?
Cytochrome p450
What is a Cp450 inhibitory drug? Give an example.
A drug which inhibits cytochrome p450 decreasing its metabolic potential. Metronidazole.
What is a Cp450 inducing drug? Give an example.
A drug which induces cytochrome p450 increasing its metabolic potential. Phenytoin.
Define drugs
A medicine or other substance which has physiological effect when ingested or otherwise introduced into the body
Define pharmacology
A branch of medicine concerned with the uses, effects and modes of action of drugs
What is an issue with patients who have co-morbidities being on multiple drugs at once?
Complex pharmacological reactions
Define druggability
The ability of a protein target to bind to a small molecule with high affinity (also known as ligandability)
What percentage of the human genome is druggable?
10-15%
What is a receptor?
A component of a cell that interacts with a specific ligand and initiates a change of biochemical events leading to the ligands observed effects.
An example of an exogenous ligand?
Drugs
An example of an endogenous ligand?
Hormones, neurotransmitters
What are the four types of receptor?
- Ligand-gated ion channels
- G-protein coupled receptor
- Kinase-linked receptors
- Cytosolic/nuclear receptors
Which receptor type is non-membrane-bound
Cytosolic/nuclear receptors
How do ligand-gated ion channels work?
- Protein integrated into a cell membrane which acts as a conduit for molecules to travel through
- Interaction of ligand with protein leads to conformational change allowing molecule through the formed pore in the membrane
- Absence of ligand leads to conformational change to shut the channel
What is an example of a ligand-gated ion channel?
Nicotinic acetylcholine receptor
How does a g-protein coupled receptor work?
- 7 transmembrane spanning proteins which form a pore
- G proteins are enzymes which act by changing GDP to GTP making it an energy dependent process
- Switched on when bound to GDP and off when bound to GTP
What is an example of a g protein coupled receptor?
Beta-adrenoreceptor
What is a kinase linked receptor?
- Homo or heterodimeric which are ligand activated
- Activation of the receptor leads to phosphorylation of the receptor molecule
- Phosphorylation leads to recruitment of scaffolding proteins which in turn initiates an intracellular response
What is an example of a kinase-linked receptor?
Receptors for growth factors?
What is a cytosolic/nuclear receptor?
- Exists within the cytoplasm of cells rather than being membrane spanning receptors
- Interact with ligands which have already been transported intracellularly
- Undergo a conformational change upon interaction with ligand becoming nucleus targeting
- They transfer to the nucleus and exert their effects directly onto DNA
- Transcriptional activators
What is myasthenia gravis caused by?
Loss of acetylcholine receptors
What is mastocytosis caused by?
Increased c-kit receptor (mast cell growth factor receptor)
What is an agonist response curve?
The effect that agonist dose has on receptor response
Are agonist response curves shown as logarithmic graphs or linear graphs?
Logarithmic
What is drug potency in relation to an agonist response curve?
A means of measuring how much of a drug is required to elicit a certain response.
EC50 = the concentration of a drug which gives half of the maximal receptor response
What is drug efficacy in relation to an agonist response curve?
How effective the drug is at eliciting a receptor response. You can have highly efficacious drugs which have a low potency - the two are not mutually inclusive.
What is selective agonism?
Certain signalling molecules have different activities on the same receptor
What is a receptor subtype?
Different types of the same receptor which may interact with different agonists and antagonists e.g. histamine receptor subtypes are all agonised by histamine but differentially antagonised producing receptor subtypes.
What are muscarinic acetylcholine receptors agonised by?
Muscarine
What are nicotinic acetylcholine receptors agonised by?
Nicotine