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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 laboratory animals or human volunteers 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.
• Post-clinical studies, or phase IV, continue to assess long-term effects, chronic toxicity, and carcinogenic potential.
• 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.
• Clinical trials for a new drug involve safety, dosage, and side effects determination in a small group of healthy individuals, followed by preliminary efficacy and safety trials in individuals with the condition being treated, and then large-scale efficacy and safety trials in a larger population of patients.
• Side effects of a drug can include headache, constipation, and skin rash.
• Side effects of morphine include hallucinations, drowsiness, and increased heart rate.
• Paracetamol (Acetaminophen) inhibits the synthesis of prostaglandin.
• Drugs have risks as well as benefits and it is important to assess these.
• Drug receptor interaction is affected by the structure of drugs.
• Drugs use double blind tests and animal testing is used to determine lethal dose.
• The main steps in drug development include preclinical studies, clinical trials, and post-marketing surveillance.</
• Addiction can be overcome by decreasing dopamine levels, but this can be dangerous.
• High Therapeutic Index means the drug is relatively safe and difficult to overdose, while Low Therapeutic Index means the drug is dangerous and requires professional administration.
• Aspirin interferes with the production of prostaglandins, which are involved in the transmission of pain impulses to the brain.
• Toxic dose (TD 50) is the amount of drug for 50% of the test subjects to experience unwanted side effects.
• Polar molecules with functional groups of hydroxyls, carboxyls, and amino acids are the most commonly used functional groups because of their solubility in water.
• ED 50 is the minimum dose for desired effect in 50% of the population in a test subject.
• LD 50 is the amount of drug for 50% of the test subjects to die.
• Tolerance is when regular administration of drugs can lead to an increase in metabolism, requiring a higher dosage to achieve the desired effect.
• Overdosing on any drug can lead to kidney, liver, and brain damage, which in severe cases can be fatal.
• Morphine is a strong analgesic administered parenterally (drugs by injection/infusion, going down routes other than the digestive tract).
• Diarrhea and dizziness are common side effects of many drugs.
• Therapeutic Index (TI) is calculated after clinical trials and is used to express effectiveness and safety of a drug.
• Low Therapeutic Index means that administration methods with high bioavailability must be monitored carefully to prevent overdose.
• Bioavailability factors include polarity and functional group.
• Aspirin prevents blood clots and heart attacks as it has the ability to thin blood.
• Heroin (diamorphine) has a higher pharmacological potency than morphine.
• Addiction is when the release of dopamine tells our body to repeat certain actions that bring us pleasure, and drugs cause our brains to release more dopamine than other healthy rewards.
• Therapeutic Window (TW) is the range of a drug dose that only causes positive effects.
• First-pass effect is the decrease in active drug concentration due to metabolism of drug at certain locations, especially oral.
• Bioavailability is the fraction of drug dosage absorbed into the bloodstream.
• Tolerance can be overcome by increasing dosage, but this can be dangerous.
• The main steps in drug development include preclinical studies, clinical trials, and post-marketing surveillance.
• Injections/intravenous have highest bioavailability (close to 100%) oral is very low (close to 20%).