Readings

• Controlled substance: drug that has the potential for abuse and is regulated by the law
• ED50: effective dose 50 or dose that produce an effect that is half the maximal response
• LD50: lethal dose 50 or dose that will 50% of animals tested will die from
• Side effect vs adverse effects: side is undesirable but not harmful while adverse are harmful
• Therapeutic index: ratio of the LD50 to ED50 in animal studies
• Drugs have certain properties that are divided into chemical and biological.
• A drugs intended effect is its therapeutic effect
• Toxic effects implies drug poisoning
• The site of action for some drugs is still unknown
• Antagonists are AKA blocking drugs
• Competitive antagonism: occurs when agonists and antagonists compete for the same receptor site
• Uncompetitive antagonism: is very similar to allosteric inhibition
• Ceiling effect: upper limit of response that a drug is able to produce
• Smaller ED50= increased potency
• Quantal(all or none) dose-response curves are used to show the % of humans/animals that respond to a specific drug dosage
• The time-plasma drug concentration curve reflects the duration of action which is the length of time that a drug continues to produce its effect
• The onset of action describes the time the drug was administered to when its effects produced an observable effect.
• Time-plasma drug concentrations are used for predicting the frequency of how much a drug has to be given for an effective response
• FDA requires drugs to satisfy these 2 requirements before it can be used for humans: efficacy and safety. Dosage will separate therapeutic effects from toxic effects.
• The LD50 is a test that is used to predict the safety of a drug
• The therapeutic index (TI) indicates the relative safety of a drug. If the TI is 10, that means 10x as much drug is needed to kill 50% of subjects as is needed to produce therapeutic effects in 50% of the animals
• Drugs that produce birth defects are known as teratogens
• Some adverse effects are not dose dependent. An individual with an unusual response to a drug is known as an idiosyncrasy
• Drugs are classified by chemical names, generic names and brand names
• Controlled substances are assigned to 1 of 5 schedules depending on their usefulness and potential for abuse
• Drug schedule 1 has the highest potential for abuse and has no accepted medical use. As the schedules increase(2,3,4,5), all of them have medical use and decreasing potential for abuse
• bioavailability: the proportion of a drug that is absorbed into the bloodstream
• Drug dependence: condition of reliance on the use of a particular drug, characterized as physical/psychological dependence
• Drug addiction: condition of drug abuse and drug dependence that is characterized by compulsive drug behaviour
• drug distribution: passage of a drug from the blood to the tissues and organs of the body
• drug metabolism: the enzymatic biotransformation of a drug into metabolites
• drug microsomal metabolizing system (DMMS): group of enzymes located primarily in the liver that function to metabolize drugs.
• Enzyme induction: increase in the amount of drug-metabolizing enzymes after repeated administration of certain drugs
• enzyme inhibition: inhibition of drug-metabolizing enzymes by certain drugs
• first-pass metabolism: drug metabolism that occurs in the intestines and liver during oral absorption of drugs into the systemic circulation.
• IM injection occur in the glutes or the delts
• Loading dose: initial drug dose administered to rapidly achieve therapeutic drug concentrations
• Maintenance dose: dose administered to maintain levels in the therapeutic range
• parenteral administration: route of drug admin that doesn't involve the GI tract
• pharmacokinetics: describes the processes of drug absorption, distribution, metabolism and excretion