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• Pharmaceutical Products and Drug Action involve ethics, side effects and safety, tolerance and addiction, drug action and development, clinical trials and placebo effect, bioavailability, and drug action & development.
• Drugs can be applied or administered in various ways such as ingestion by mouth, injection with a syringe, inhalation by mouth or nose, absorption through the skin, absorption in the rectum or vagina, or applied into the ear or eye.
• Drugs interact with binding sites of enzyme and cellular receptor(protein receiving signal) and when drugs bind to cellular receptors the cells responds by changing state to allow other molecules to pass.
• The efficiency of a drug depends on its chemical structure and binding sites.
• Drug development involves lead compound identification, either isolated from natural sources or synthesized and screened, and drug discovery is slow and expensive; drug design relies on computers.
• Clinical trials involve different phases, evaluating effectiveness, safety, dosage, and side effects.
• Post-clinical studies, or phase IV, continue to assess long-term effects, chronic toxicity, carcinogenic potential, and other relevant outcomes.
• Aspirin is synthesized from willow bark and is one of the most commonly used medicines around the world.
• Aspirin has multiple different ways of use and is used as a pain reliever, fever reducer, and anticoagulant.
• The placebo effect is the therapeutic action of placebo, a treatment with no active properties, and participants who take the placebo may experience an improvement in their condition, such as pain relief.
• The synthesis of aspirin involves the reaction of salicylic acid and acetic anhydride, which produces aspirin (acetylsalicylic acid) and acetic acid (ethanoic acid).
• Clinical trials involve laboratory animals or human volunteers being separated into two groups of equal size, one group receives the drug, the other group receives the placebo, and a double blind study ensures neither the participants nor the experimenters know who received the drug or placebo.
• Aspirin is a weak acid.
• The esterification reaction involves the splitting of the acetic anhydride molecule, where one part replaces the hydrogen atom of the –OH group on the salicylic acid and the other accepts the hydrogen atom to form acetic acid.
• Clinical trials for Remdesivir, a drug used for COVID-19, involved a small group of healthy individuals in phase I to determine the safety and dosage, a larger group of individuals diagnosed with COVID-19 in phase II to assess safety and effectiveness, and large-scale efficacy and safety trials in phase III.
• The esterification reaction requires an acid catalyst and produces white odourless crystals (aspirin).
• Opiates are a subset of drugs derived naturally from the opium poppies.
• Common side effects of drugs include headache, constipation, and skin rash or dermatitis.
• Aspirin is primarily used as a pain reliever, fever reducer, and anticoagulant.
• Opioids are a broader category that includes both synthetic and semi-synthetic substances that bind to opioid receptors to provide pain relief, and includes the opiates.
• Aspirin is an everyday pain reliever for many, as it relieves mild to moderate pain and inflammation.
• All opioids are not opiates, for example, fentanyl, codone, hydrocodone.
• Side effects of aspirin include irritation of the stomach, ulcers if overused, blood thinning, and allergies.
• Opiates are a class of drugs that derive from/mimic the substances found in the opium plant.
• Bayer held the patent on the synthesis of Aspirin from 1899 until the 1930s.
• Opiates work in the brain to produce a variety of effects, including being a pain reliever.
• Aspirin became a generic drug in the 1930s.
• Drug companies, as a whole, must ensure they are producing a high yield and a very pure sample.
• Opium is made of the dried latex of the opium poppy (Papaver somniferum) and contains alkaloids.
• Improvement of purity in the production of aspirin comes from the recrystallisation process.
• Purity in the production of aspirin can also be tested using melting point and melting point range.
• Infrared spectroscopy can also identify the bonds present in the impurities.
• Aspirin is only slightly soluble in water due to a non-polar phenyl group.
• Aspirin has no specific target, so it inhibits the production of prostaglandins throughout the body, so all pain and fever is treated.
• The solubility of aspirin can be increased by reacting it with NaOH aqueous solution, producing an ionic salt known as Soluble Aspirin.
• Aspirin and alcohol have a synergistic effect, with each drug having a higher medicinal effect when taken together.
• Prostaglandins are substances created by cells in the body when experiencing trauma, resulting in the sensation of pain, swelling and sometimes fever.
• Aspirin is chemically modified into a salt to increase its solubility in water.
• Purity can be tested using infrared spectroscopy to determine if the sample tested contains the type of bonds expected in aspirin.
• Aspirin can also be taken as a prophylactic to slow or prevent the formation of a blockage in the first place.