Basic Pharmacology & PK/PD
A substance that elicits an effect on a living system through chemical processes.
What is a drug?
These types of patients are over 65 years of age, and their advanced age may require additional consideration of a drug's PK/PD profile.
What are geriatric patients?
The part of a neuron that is the location of information output.
What is the axon terminal?
An altered version of an approved drug that is meant to produce more intense effects on the user.
What is a designer drug?
A type of drug used to treat anxiety.
What are anxiolytics?
The study of how a drug is administered, distributed, metabolized, and excreted by the body.
What is pharmacokinetics?
This aspect of a drug's pharmacokinetic profile may differ in infant patients due to a higher percentage of water in their body compared to adult patients.
What is distribution?
Nerve axons in the spinal cord that travel from the brain to peripheral structures.
What are efferent neurons?
A cannabinoid that the common psychoactive chemical present in marijuana.
What is tetrahydrocannabinol (THC)?
A type of antidepressant that reduces the reabsorption of serotonin and increases stimulation of serotonin receptors.
What is a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI)?
This type of drug only becomes pharmacologically active once it is metabolized by the body.
What is a prodrug?
This aspect of a lipid-soluble drug's pharmacokinetic profile is prolonged in a geriatric patient due to their higher percentage of body fat compared to younger adult patients?
What is half-life/duration of action?
A region of the diencephalon that controls body temperature and houses the pituitary gland.
What is the hypothalamus?
An anti-anxiety drug commonly used to treat patients experiencing substance withdrawals.
What is diazepam?
A neurotransmitter that has an inhibitory effect on the CNS by reducing the generation of action potentials in neurons, and whose receptors are the target of hypnotic drugs.
What is gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA)?
A pharmacokinetic graph that represents the concentration of a drug in the bloodstream as a function of time.
What is a time-plasma drug concentration curve?
This FDA pregnancy category of drugs describes a drug that has demonstrated teratogenic effects in human and animals models, and the risk to the pregnancy verifiably outweighs any therapeutic benefits.
What is Pregnancy Category X?
A class of neurotransmitters that include serotonin, epinephrine, and histamine.
What are catecholamines?
A drug of abuse that acts as a noncompetitive antagonist of NMDA receptors.
What is phencyclidine (PCP)?
An enzyme that breaks down norepinephrine and serotonin, and is an inhibitory target of a class of anti-depressants.
What is monoamine oxidase (MAO)?
A type of cell receptor that drugs targeting the CNS, heart, or neuromuscular junctions may need to elicit allosteric modulation of in order to elicit therapeutic effects?
What is a ligan-gated ion channel?
This is a drug complication concern especially regarding the elderly and describes drug regiments that involve taking multiple drugs simultaneously.
What is polypharmacy?
A class of peptide neurotransmitters that includes endorphin and dynorphin.
What are opioid peptides?
A drug of abuse type that is lipid soluble and enhances the release of dopamine.
What are amphetamines?
A type of sedative drug that increases non-REM sleep cycle stage 2 and decreases stage 4, but does not suppress REM sleep cycles; it includes drugs like phenobarbital.
What are barbiturates?