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NURS 251 Module 1 pharmacology nurs251 portage learning module 1 (nurs251) A+
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NURS 251 Module 1 pharmacology A+,1.1: An Introduction to Pharmacology Concepts - must be heavily monitored
Watch Module 1.1 Video 1
Pharmacology is the study or science of drugs. What is a drug? Clinically, it is important to recognize the difference between these different ways
A drug is any chemical that affects the physiologic processes of a living organism. drugs can affect the body. A simple side effect could be something as harmless as
Commonly, the term drug refers to any medication that is used for diagnosing, mild nausea after taking a medication that can be managed by taking it with food.
curing, or treating disease. The drug therapy can continue without a problem. However, adverse effects need
to be assessed to determine whether there is any risk of harm. Drug therapy is
Drug Effects often a risk vs. benefit assessment. The patient’s provider should weigh the risk of
Drugs have many different effects on the body including the following: taking the medication vs. the benefit. It often comes down to the severity of the
(1) therapeutic effects, disease being treated to decide the number of adverse events that will be
(2) side effects, tolerated. A good example of this is chemotherapy treatments for cancer. There
(3) adverse effects and are often adverse events associated with these treatment regimens, yet the
(4) toxic effects. treatment is continued because the benefit of treating the cancer is greater than
the adverse events the patient experiences. However, there are certainly times
1. Therapeutic effect is the desired drug effect to alleviate some when a treatment becomes too toxic, and the patient is unable to tolerate the
condition or symptom. regimen. This is often a large part of managing a cancer patient’s treatment, to
2. Side effects are the drug effect other than the therapeutic effect that assess how they are handling the adverse effects associated with the treatment
are usually undesirable but not harmful. regimen and determine whether it is becoming too toxic and needs to be
3. Adverse effect is a general term for undesirable and potentially harmful suspended.
drug effects.
4. Toxic effects are undesirable drug effects that implies the drug is Basic Concept
poisoning the body and can be harmful or even life-threatening. There are some basic concepts that are important to understand and that
can be applied to any drug. Most important is the drug’s mechanism of
Drug Effects USING DIABETES AS AN EXAMPLE action—how a drug produces its effects. This course will cover the
Drugs have many different effects on the body including the following: accepted mechanism of action of known drugs.
(1) therapeutic effects the desired effect When a drug enters the body, it has a targeted site of action—the location
e.g., effect: lowers the patient’s blood sugar within the body where a drug exerts its therapeutic effect, often a specific
drug receptor.
(2) side effects undesirable but not necessarily harmful (not harmful) Generally, these sites of action or receptors are on the surface or inside a
e.g., effect: some diabetes medication can cause nausea (can be treated) cell.
Receptors are specific cellular structures that a drug binds to in order to
(3) adverse effects undesirable and potentially harmful produce a physiologic effect. When a drug binds to a receptor, it can act
e.g., effect: medication that can be harmful / damaging to the liver either as an agonist, works to activate a physiologic response or drug
- this type of medication intake must be monitored. effect, or an antagonist, works to interfere with other drugs or substances
from producing a drug-effect.
(4) toxic effects undesirable & harmful / life threatening
e.g., effect: e.g., chemotherapy, has a lot of adverse effects; monitored to make
sure that it won’t be too toxic. If it gets too toxic / harmful, treatment may have
to be suspended.
,Basic concepts
Mechanism of Action It is how the drug produces its effect within the
body. When we discuss about the therapeutics, we will go through the
course of actions of all the drugs we go over when they are known. There
are a lot of drugs that we still don’t exactly know how they produce their
effects.
Site of Action Where, within the body the drug actually exerts its
effect. In many cases, it’s called a receptor.
Receptors the location where site of action is.
Receptors are often either on the surface of a cell or inside a cell that
drug is going to bind to the receptor and exert its effect.
Two different ways drugs can exert its effect on receptors:
Either as an agonist or an antagonist.
Going back to that diabetes example:
If the drug is agonist,
Agonist the drug is going to bind to the receptor and then cause
physiological response to happen.
Diabetes example: So if the receptor generally releases insulin, if the drug
is acting as an agonist; it’s going to bind to that receptor and cause the
receptor to release insulin, hence, lowering the blood sugar in the patient.
If the drug is antagonist,
Antagonist the drug is going to bind to the receptor and prevent /
oppose a certain action / physiological response (blocks it).
Diabetes example: the drug is going to bind to the receptor and
prevent the release of insulin.
Or a better example would be preventing the release of sugar, if we’re
trying to lower blood sugar in a diabetes patient.
Summary
An agonist is a drug that binds to the receptor, producing a similar
response to the intended chemical and receptor. Whereas an antagonist is
a drug that binds to the receptor either on the primary site, or on another
site, which all together stops the receptor from producing a response.
https://lx.uts.edu.au/pharmacology/article/agonists-and-antagonists/
, https://7esl.com/agonist-vs-antagonist/
https://pediaa.com/difference-between-agonist-and-antagonist/
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