ADME
How a drug enters the body, primarily in the small intestine for oral drugs.
What is absorption?
A specific protein structure on a cell that a drug binds to, acting like a lock.
What is a receptor?
The time required for a drug's plasma concentration to decrease by one-half (50%).
What is half-life?
The ability of an agonist drug to affect the cell and change the way the cell behaves.
What is efficacy?
Characterized by physiological need and tolerance, but not necessarily compulsive behavior or the disease state of addiction.
What is dependency?
The movement of an absorbed drug from the bloodstream into body tissues.
What is distribution?
A drug that binds to a receptor and produces a predicted action or therapeutic effect.
What is an agonist?
The time it takes for a drug to be eliminated from the body.
What is clearance?
The body's adaptation that requires increasingly higher doses of a drug to achieve the same effect.
What is tolerance?
One of the characteristics of addiction, along with damaging consequences and painful withdrawal, that forces dose increases.
What is tolerance?
The process of transforming a drug in the body, which mostly occurs in the liver.
What is metabolism?
A drug that binds to a receptor but produces no effect, instead blocking the action of another substance.
What is an antagonist?
This initial, often higher, dose is used to determine the necessary amount of drug to start treatment.
What is the loading dose?
This is the "ceiling" of a drug's effect, after which adding more drug will only lead to toxicity.
What is maximal response?
This neurotransmitter is released in higher levels with the abuse of drugs like cocaine and heroin.
What is dopamine?