Testing Medicinal Drugs Flashcards
What Are the 3 main stages of drugs testing?
1-tested on human cells and tissues in the lab
2- test the drug on live animals
3- if the drug passes the test on animals, it’s tested on human volunteers
What certain drugs can you not use human cells and tissues for?
Drugs that affect your whole or multiple body systems
Why do you test on live animals
To see if the drug produces the effect your looking for, to find out about its toxicity (how harmful it is) and to see the best dosage
How many animals must a new drug be tested on says the new law?
2
What is the trail called when you test a drug on voluntary humans
Clinical trial
Of the human test,what is the first drug tested on & why?
A healthy human. This is to make sure it doesn’t have any harmful side affects when the body is working normally
How does the dosage change throughout the trail?
Starts off very low and gradually increases
What happens if the results on the healthy volunteers are good? and what is found
The drug can be tested onto people suffering the illness. The optimum dose is found, this is the drug that is the most effective and suffers from less side effects
What is done to see how well the test goes?
The patients are split into two groups. One is given the new drug and one is given a placebo. This is so the doctor can an see if the drug makes an actual difference, to stop bias
Clinical trials are_____
Blind.
The patient in the study doesn’t know who has the real drug or who has the placebo . Often they are double blind trails where the patient nor the doctor knows who has the real drug or placebo until the results have been gathered. This is so the doctors monitoring the patients aren’t influenced by thir knowledge.
What is thalidomide
A drug that was not thoroughly tested in the 1950’s. It was intended as a sleeping pill, but later was found as to be effective as relieving morning sickness in pregnant women
Why was thalidomide bad?
It wasn’t tested therefore it wasn’t known that is could pass through the fetus causing abnormal limb development. In some cases babies were born with no arms and legs
How many babies were effected by thalidomide
10,000 and only about half survived.
What happened to thalidomide after people realised its affects
It was banned and more rigorous testing procedures were introduced
What recently has thalidomide bee used for
In treatment of leprosy and other diseases such as cancer
