Introduction and overview Basic Principle of Pharmacoloy By Carl Rosow, M.D., Ph.D.
A drug is a chemical agent which can affect living processes. For purposes of this course we will mainly be talking about small molecules which affect cellular processes. Most of these are Xenobiotics(Gr. xenos- stranger) chemicals that are not synthesized by the body, but introduced into it from outside. There is inevitably a certain amount of ambiguity in this definition: Is oxygen or water a drug? How about Vitamin C in a glass of orange juice? How about an injection of Vitamin C to treat scurvy?
Pharmacology(Gr. pharmakon- a drug or poison, logos- word or discourse) is the science dealing with actions of drugs on the body (pharmacodynamics) and the fate of drugs in the body (pharmacokinetics). It overlaps with pharmacy, the science of preparation of drugs; much of it deals with therapeutics, the treatment of disease (by whatever means). Toxicology is the branch of pharmacology dealing with the "undesirable" effects of drugs on biological processes (in the case of a nerve gas the bad effect may be a desired one).
In order for a drug to work, it must enter the body and somehow be distributed in such a way that it gets to its site of action. In most cases the site of action is a macromolecular "receptor" located in the target tissue. Most drug effects are temporary, because the body has systems for drug detoxification and elimination.
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