Pharmacology (from Greek Ancient Greek is the historical stage in the development of the Greek language spanning the Archaic , Classical (c. 5th–4th centuries BC), and Hellenistic (c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD) periods of ancient Greece and the ancient world. It is predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek. Its Hellenistic phase is known as Koine (& φάρμακον, pharmakon, "drug"; and -λογία, -logia) is the branch of biology Biology is a natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy concerned with the study of drug A drug, broadly speaking, is any substance that, when absorbed into the body of a living organism, alters normal bodily function. There is no single, precise definition, as there are different meanings in drug control law, government regulations, medicine, and colloquial usage action.[1] More specifically, it is the study of the interactions that occur between a living organism and chemicals that affect normal or abnormal biochemical function. If substances have medicinal A pharmaceutical drug, also referred to as medicine, medication or medicament, can be loosely defined as any chemical substance intended for use in the medical diagnosis, cure, treatment, or prevention of disease properties, they are considered pharmaceuticals A pharmaceutical drug, also referred to as medicine, medication or medicament, can be loosely defined as any chemical substance intended for use in the medical diagnosis, cure, treatment, or prevention of disease. The field encompasses drug A drug, broadly speaking, is any substance that, when absorbed into the body of a living organism, alters normal bodily function. There is no single, precise definition, as there are different meanings in drug control law, government regulations, medicine, and colloquial usage composition and properties, interactions Interaction is a kind of action that occurs as two or more objects have an effect upon one another. The idea of a two-way effect is essential in the concept of interaction, as opposed to a one-way causal effect. A closely related term is interconnectivity, which deals with the interactions of interactions within systems: combinations of many, toxicology Toxicology is a branch of biology and medicine concerned with the study of the adverse effects of chemicals on living organisms. It is the study of symptoms, mechanisms, treatments and detection of poisoning, especially the poisoning of people, therapy, and medical applications and antipathogenic capabilities. The two main areas of pharmacology are pharmacodynamics Pharmacodynamics is the study of the physiological effects of drugs on the body or on microorganisms or parasites within or on the body and the mechanisms of drug action and the relationship between drug concentration and effect. One dominant example is drug-receptor interactions as modeled by and pharmacokinetics Pharmacokinetics, sometimes abbreviated as PK, is a branch of pharmacology dedicated to the determination of the fate of substances administered externally to a living organism. In practice this discipline is applied mainly to drug substances, though in principle it concerns itself with all manner of compounds ingested or otherwise delivered. The former studies the effects of the drugs on biological systems, and the latter the effects of biological systems on the drugs. In broad terms, pharmacodynamics Pharmacodynamics is the study of the physiological effects of drugs on the body or on microorganisms or parasites within or on the body and the mechanisms of drug action and the relationship between drug concentration and effect. One dominant example is drug-receptor interactions as modeled by discusses the interactions of chemicals with biological receptors In biochemistry, a receptor is a protein molecule, embedded in either the plasma membrane or the cytoplasm of a cell, to which one or more specific kinds of signaling molecules may attach. A molecule which binds to a receptor is called a ligand, and may be a peptide (short protein) or other small molecule, such as a neurotransmitter, a hormone, a, and pharmacokinetics Pharmacokinetics, sometimes abbreviated as PK, is a branch of pharmacology dedicated to the determination of the fate of substances administered externally to a living organism. In practice this discipline is applied mainly to drug substances, though in principle it concerns itself with all manner of compounds ingested or otherwise delivered discusses the absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion of chemicals from the biological systems. Pharmacology is not synonymous with pharmacy Pharmacy is the health profession that links the health sciences with the chemical sciences and it is charged with ensuring the safe and effective use of pharmaceutical drugs. The word derives from the Greek φάρμακον , "drug, medicine" (the earliest form of the word is the Mycenaean Greek pa-ma-ko, attested in Linear B syllabic, which is the name used for a profession, though in common usage the two terms are confused at times. Pharmacology deals with how drugs interact within biological systems to affect function. It is the study of drugs, of the reactions of the body and drug on each other, the sources of drugs, their nature, and their properties. In contrast, pharmacy is a biomedical science concerned with preparation, dispensing, dosage, and the safe and effective use of medicines.
Dioscorides Pedanius Dioscorides was an ancient Greek physician, pharmacologist and botanist from Anazarbus, Cilicia, Asia Minor, who practised in ancient Rome during the time of Nero. He had the opportunity to travel extensively seeking medicinal substances from all over the Roman and Greek world' De Materia Medica is often said to be the oldest and most valuable work in the history of pharmacology.[2] The origins of clinical pharmacology Clinical pharmacology is the science of drugs and their clinical use. It is underpinned by the basic science of pharmacology, with added focus on the application of pharmacological principles and methods in the real world. It has a broad scope, from the discovery of new target molecules, to the effects of drug usage in whole populations date back to the Middle Ages The Middle Ages is a period of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The period followed the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476, and preceded the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period in a three-period division of history: Classical, Medieval, and Modern. The term "Middle Ages" (medium aevum) was coined in in Avicenna Abū ‘Alī al-Ḥusayn ibn ‘Abd Allāh ibn Sīnā, known as Abū Alī Sīnā or, more commonly, Ibn Sīnā (Arabic: ابن سینا) or Pour Sina, but most commonly known in English by his Latinized name Avicenna (Greek: Aβιτζιανός, Avitzianós), (c. 980 - 1037) was a polymath of Persian origin and the foremost physician and's The Canon of Medicine The Canon of Medicine is a 14-volume medical encyclopedia written by Persian scientist and physician Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna) and completed in 1025. The book was based on a combination of his own personal experience, medieval Islamic medicine, the writings of the Roman physician Galen, the Indian physicians Sushruta and Charaka, and Persian medicine,, Peter of Spain Peter of Spain or, in Latin, Petrus Hispanus is the Mediaeval author of Tractatus, a standard textbook on logic, and often credited with a number of works on medicine. He also wrote Summule logicales magistri Petri Hispani (Collection of Logic Matters of Master Peter of Spain) which has a large volume of manuscripts and printed editions. This is a's Commentary on Isaac, and John of St Amand's Commentary on the Antedotary of Nicholas.[3] Clinical pharmacology owes much of its foundation to the work of William Withering.[4] Pharmacology as a scientific discipline did not further advance until the mid-19th century amid the great biomedical resurgence of that period.[5] Before the second half of the nineteenth century, the remarkable potency and specificity of the actions of drugs such as morphine Morphine (pronounced /ˈmɔrfiːn/) (MS Contin, MSIR, Avinza, Kadian, Oramorph, Roxanol, Kapanol) is a potent opiate analgesic medication and is considered to be the prototypical opioid, quinine Quinine is a natural white crystalline alkaloid having antipyretic (fever-reducing), antimalarial, analgesic (painkilling), anti-inflammatory properties and a bitter taste. It is a stereoisomer of quinidine which, unlike quinine, is an anti-arrhythmic and digitalis Digitalis is a genus of about 20 species of herbaceous perennials, shrubs, and biennials that are commonly called foxgloves. This genus was traditionally placed in the figwort family Scrophulariaceae, but upon recent reviews of phylogenetic research, it has now been placed in the much enlarged family Plantaginaceae. This genus is native to western were explained vaguely and with reference to extraordinary chemical powers and affinities to certain organs or tissues.[6] The first pharmacology department was set up by Rudolf Buchheim Rudolf Buchheim was a German pharmacologist who was born in Bautzen. In 1845 he earned his doctorate from the University of Leipzig and soon after became a professor at the University of Dorpat. While at Dorpat he created the first pharmacological institute at that school. In 1867 he became professor of pharmacology and toxicology at the in 1847, in recognition of the need to understand how therapeutic drugs and poisons produced their effects.[5]
Early pharmacologists focused on natural substances, mainly plant extracts. Pharmacology developed in the 19th century as a biomedical science that applied the principles of scientific experimentation to therapeutic contexts.[7]
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Divisions
Clinical_pharmacology">Clinical pharmacology Clinical pharmacology is the science of drugs and their clinical use. It is underpinned by the basic science of pharmacology, with added focus on the application of pharmacological principles and methods in the real world. It has a broad scope, from the discovery of new target molecules, to the effects of drug usage in whole populations
The medical field of medication effects on humans
Neuropharmacology">Neuropharmacology Neuropharmacology is the study of how drugs affect cellular function in the nervous system. There are two main branches of neuropharmacology: behavioral and molecular. Behavioral neuropharmacology focuses on the study of how drugs affect human behavior , including the study of how drug dependence and addiction affect the human brain. Molecular
Effects of medication on nervous system functioning.
Psychopharmacology">Psychopharmacology Psychopharmacology is the study of drug-induced changes in mood, sensation, thinking, and behavior
Effects of medication on the brain; observing changed behaviors of the body and read the effect of drugs on the brain.
Pharmacogenetics">Pharmacogenetics The terms pharmacogenomics and pharmacogenetics tend to be used interchangeably, and a precise, consensus definition of either remains elusive. Pharmacogenetics is generally regarded as the study or clinical testing of genetic variation that gives rise to differing response to drugs, while pharmacogenomics is the broader application of genomic
Clinical testing of genetic variation that gives rise to differing response to drugs.
Pharmacogenomics">Pharmacogenomics Pharmacogenomics is the branch of pharmacology which deals with the influence of genetic variation on drug response in patients by correlating gene expression or single-nucleotide polymorphisms with a drug's efficacy or toxicity. By doing so, pharmacogenomics aims to develop rational means to optimise drug therapy, with respect to the patients'
Application of genomic technologies to new drug discovery and further characterization of older drugs.
Pharmacoepidemiology">Pharmacoepidemiology To accomplish this study, pharmacoepidemiology borrows from both pharmacology and epidemiology. Thus, pharmacoepidemiology can be called a bridge science spanning both pharmacology and epidemiology. Pharmacology is the study of the effect of drugs and clinical pharmacology is the study of effect of drugs in humans. Part of the task of clinical
Study of effects of drugs in large numbers of people
Toxicology">Toxicology Toxicology is a branch of biology and medicine concerned with the study of the adverse effects of chemicals on living organisms. It is the study of symptoms, mechanisms, treatments and detection of poisoning, especially the poisoning of people
Study of harmful or toxic effects of drugs
Theoretical Pharmacology
Study of metrics in Pharmacology
Posology">Posology Pharmacology is the branch of biology concerned with the study of drug action. More specifically, it is the study of the interactions that occur between a living organism and chemicals that affect normal or abnormal biochemical function. If substances have medicinal properties, they are considered pharmaceuticals. The field encompasses drug
How medicines are dosed It also depends upon various factors like age, climate, weight, sex etc
Pharmacognosy">Pharmacognosy Pharmacognosy is the study of medicines derived from natural sources. The American Society of Pharmacognosy defines pharmacognosy as "the study of the physical, chemical, biochemical and biological properties of drugs, drug substances or potential drugs or drug substances of natural origin as well as the search for new drugs from natural
A branch of pharmacology dealing especially with the composition, use, and development of medicinal substances of biological origin and especially medicinal substances obtained from plants also known as deriving medicines from plants
Behavioral Pharmacology
Is the study of the effects of drugs on behavior. It includes preclinical and in vivo research, such as small animal and rodent testing used to evaluate behavioral responses to novel drug treatment.
Environmental Pharmacology
Scientific background
The study of chemicals requires intimate knowledge of the biological system affected. With the knowledge of cell biology Cell biology is an academic discipline that studies cells – their physiological properties, their structure, the organelles they contain, interactions with their environment, their life cycle, division and death. This is done both on a microscopic and molecular level. Cell biology research encompasses both the great diversity of single-celled and biochemistry Biochemistry is the study of the chemical processes in living organisms. It deals with the structures and functions of cellular components such as proteins, carbohydrates, lipids, nucleic acids and other biomolecules. Over the last 40 years biochemistry has become so successful at explaining living processes that now almost all areas of the life increasing, the field of pharmacology has also changed substantially. It has become possible, through molecular analysis of receptors In biochemistry, a receptor is a protein molecule, embedded in either the plasma membrane or the cytoplasm of a cell, to which one or more specific kinds of signaling molecules may attach. A molecule which binds to a receptor is called a ligand, and may be a peptide (short protein) or other small molecule, such as a neurotransmitter, a hormone, a, to design chemicals that act on specific cellular signaling or metabolic pathways In biochemistry, metabolic pathways are series of chemical reactions occurring within a cell. In each pathway, a principal chemical is modified by chemical reactions. Enzymes catalyze these reactions, and often require dietary minerals, vitamins, and other cofactors in order to function properly. Because of the many chemicals that may be involved, by affecting sites directly on cell-surface receptors (which modulate and mediate cellular signaling pathways controlling cellular function).
A chemical has, from the pharmacological point-of-view, various properties. Pharmacokinetics Pharmacokinetics, sometimes abbreviated as PK, is a branch of pharmacology dedicated to the determination of the fate of substances administered externally to a living organism. In practice this discipline is applied mainly to drug substances, though in principle it concerns itself with all manner of compounds ingested or otherwise delivered describes the effect of the body on the chemical (e.g. half-life Half-life is the period of time it takes for a substance undergoing decay to decrease by half. The name was originally used to describe a characteristic of unstable atoms , but may apply to any quantity which follows a set-rate decay and volume of distribution The volume of distribution , also known as apparent volume of distribution, is a pharmacological term used to quantify the distribution of a medication between plasma and the rest of the body after oral or parenteral dosing. It is defined as the volume in which the amount of drug would need to be uniformly distributed to produce the observed blood), and pharmacodynamics Pharmacodynamics is the study of the physiological effects of drugs on the body or on microorganisms or parasites within or on the body and the mechanisms of drug action and the relationship between drug concentration and effect. One dominant example is drug-receptor interactions as modeled by describes the chemical's effect on the body (desired or toxic Toxicity is the degree to which a substance is able to damage an exposed organism. Toxicity can refer to the effect on a whole organism, such as an animal, bacterium, or plant, as well as the effect on a substructure of the organism, such as a cell or an organ (organotoxicity), such as the liver (hepatotoxicity). By extension, the word may be).
When describing the pharmacokinetic properties of a chemical, pharmacologists are often interested in LADME:
- Liberation - disintegration (for solid oral forms {breaking down into smaller particles}), dispersal and dissolution
- Absorption Digestion is the mechanical and chemical breaking down of food into smaller components, to a form that can be absorbed, for instance, into a blood stream. Digestion is a form of catabolism; a break-down of macro food molecules to smaller ones - How is the medication absorbed (through the skin The skin is the outer covering of the body. In humans, it is the largest organ of the integumentary system made up of multiple layers of ectodermal tissue, and guards the underlying muscles, bones, ligaments and internal organs. Human skin is not unlike that of most other mammals except that it is not protected by a pelt and appears hairless, the intestine In human anatomy, the intestine is the segment of the alimentary canal extending from the stomach to the anus and, in humans and other mammals, consists of two segments, the small intestine and the large intestine. In humans, the small intestine is further subdivided into the duodenum, jejunum and ileum while the large intestine is subdivided into, the oral mucosa)?
- Distribution Distribution in pharmacology is a branch of pharmacokinetics which describes the reversible transfer of drug from one location to another within the body - How does it spread through the organism?
- Metabolism Drug metabolism is the biochemical modification of pharmaceutical substances by living organisms, usually through specialized enzymatic systems. This is a form of xenobiotic metabolism. Drug metabolism often converts lipophilic chemical compounds into more readily excreted polar products. Its rate is an important determinant of the duration and - Is the medication converted chemically inside the body, and into which substances. Are these active? Could they be toxic?
- Excretion Excretion is the process by which waste products of metabolism and other non-useful materials are eliminated from an organism. It is an essential process in all forms of life. It contrasts secretion, where the substance may have specific tasks after leaving the cell - How is the medication eliminated (through the bile, urine, breath, skin)?
Medication is said to have a narrow or wide therapeutic index The therapeutic index , is a comparison of the amount of a therapeutic agent that causes the therapeutic effect to the amount that causes death. Quantitatively, it is the ratio given by the lethal dose divided by the therapeutic dose. A therapeutic index is the lethal dose of a drug for 50% of the population (LD50) divided by the minimum effective or therapeutic window. This describes the ratio of desired effect to toxic effect. A compound with a narrow therapeutic index (close to one) exerts its desired effect at a dose close to its toxic dose. A compound with a wide therapeutic index (greater than five) exerts its desired effect at a dose substantially below its toxic dose. Those with a narrow margin are more difficult to dose and administer, and may require therapeutic drug monitoring (examples are warfarin, some antiepileptics, aminoglycoside antibiotics). Most anti-cancer drugs have a narrow therapeutic margin: toxic side-effects are almost always encountered at doses used to kill tumors.
Medicine development and safety testing
Development of medication is a vital concern to medicine, but also has strong economical and political implications. To protect the consumer and prevent abuse, many governments regulate the manufacture, sale, and administration of medication. In the United States, the main body that regulates pharmaceuticals is the Food and Drug Administration and they enforce standards set by the United States Pharmacopoeia. In the European Union, the main body that regulates pharmaceuticals is the EMEA and they enforce standards set by the European Pharmacopoeia.
The metabolic stability and the reactivity of a library of candidate drug compounds have to be assessed for drug metabolism and toxicological studies. Many methods have been proposed for quantitative predictions in drug metabolism; one example of a recent computational method is SPORCalc[8]. If the chemical structure of a medicinal compound is altered slightly, this could slightly or dramatically alter the medicinal properties of the compound depending on the level of alteration as it relates to the structural composition of the substrate or receptor site on which it exerts its medicinal effect, a concept referred to as the structural activity relationship (SAR). This means that when a useful activity has been identified, chemists will make many similar compounds called analogues, in an attempt to maximize the desired medicinal effect(s) of the compound. This development phase can take anywhere from a few years to a decade or more and is very expensive.[9]
These new analogues need to be developed. It needs to be determined how safe the medicine is for human consumption, its stability in the human body and the best form for delivery to the desired organ system, like tablet or aerosol. After extensive testing, which can take up to 6 years, the new medicine is ready for marketing and selling.[9]
As a result of the long time required to develop analogues and test a new medicine and the fact that of every 5000 potential new medicines typically only one will ever reach the open market, this is an expensive way of doing things, costing millions of dollars. To recoup this outlay pharmaceutical companies may do a number of things:[9]
- Carefully research the demand for their potential new product before spending an outlay of company funds.[9]
- Obtain a patent on the new medicine preventing other companies from producing that medicine for a certain allocation of time.[9]
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Wed, 01 Sep 2010 16:25:15 GMT+00:00
NutraIngredients-usa.com ... ensues from trials with negative outcomes, in favor of hopefully more positive outcomes from the basic pharmacology and mechanism of action studies. ...
Sat, 17 Oct 2009 15:13:01 PDT
, Lauren E. Frank, Angela D. Caldera-Siu, Emmanuel N. Pothos Department of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics, Tufts University School of ... laverabestia.org.
Egan, Talmage D.
Sat, 01 Aug 2009 07:00:00 GM
The trend toward rapid-onset, rapid-offset drugs in anesthesia . pharmacology. is firmly entrenched. Sugammadex, the cyclodextrin-based neuromuscular blockade reversal agent, although not a soft drug, can be viewed as another example of a ...
