Portal:Pharmacy and pharmacology
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Pharmacy and pharmacology portal
Welcome to the Pharmacy and Pharmacology Portal! The purpose of this page is to organize many of the pharmacology and drug-related articles on Wikipedia, to highlight some of the best articles, and to point out some of the recent activities and developments of WikiProject Pharmacology. Please see our medical disclaimer for cautions about Wikipedia's limitations.
Pharmacology (in Greek: pharmacon (φάρμακον) meaning remedy, and logos (λόγος) meaning science) is the study of how substances interact with living organisms to produce a change in function. If substances have medicinal properties, they are considered pharmaceuticals. The field encompasses mechanisms of drug action, drug composition and properties, interactions, toxicology, therapies, medical applications, and antipathogenic capabilities.
Pharmacy (from the Greek φάρμακον = remedy) is a transitional field between the health sciences and the chemical sciences, as well as the profession charged with ensuring the safe use of medications. Traditionally, pharmacists have compounded and dispensed medications based on prescriptions from physicians. More recently, pharmacy has come to include other services related to patient care, including clinical practice, medication review, and drug information. Some of these new pharmaceutical roles are now mandated by law in various legislatures. Pharmacists, therefore, are drug therapy experts, and the primary health professionals who optimize medication management to produce positive health outcomes.
The field of pharmacy can generally be divided into three main disciplines:
- Pharmaceutics concerns on how to convert medication and drugs to suitable drug dosage forms.
- Pharmaceutical Sciences includes pharmaceutical chemistry, pharmacognosy, phytochemistry and pharmacology.
- Pharmacy practice concerns dispensing medication correctly. In the late 20th century, this field has developed into hospital pharmacy and clinical pharmacy. All of these fields are concentrated on optimizing patient care.
Inside every branch of pharmacy are many specialized branches related to many scientific disciplines. This makes pharmaceuticals related to the majority of pure and applied sciences. For example, medicinal chemistry can be divided into: ADME, bioavailability, chemogenomics, drug design, drug discovery, enzyme inhibition, mechanism of action, pharmacodynamics, pharmacokinetics, pharmacology, pharmacophore perception, Quantitative Structure-Activity Relationships, and Structure-Activity Relationships. Pharmacology really makes sense of pharmaceutical studies.
Biology (including molecular biology and biochemistry), physiology, organic chemistry, microbiology, parasitology, and also botany are all related in some way to the pharmaceutical sciences. Recently, the field of drug discovery and drug design has developed with new technologies invented in other fields, such as bioinformatics, cheminformatics, computational chemistry, genetics, pharmacogenomics, and proteomics.
Linezolid is a synthetic antibiotic used for the treatment of serious infections caused by Gram-positive bacteria that are resistant to several other antibiotics. A member of the oxazolidinone class of drugs, linezolid is active against most Gram-positive bacteria that cause disease, including streptococci, vancomycin-resistant enterococci, and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. The main indications of linezolid are infections of the skin and soft tissues and pneumonia (particularly hospital-acquired pneumonia), although off-label use for a variety of other infections is becoming popular. Discovered in the late 1980s and first approved for use in 2000, linezolid was the first commercially available oxazolidinone antibiotic. As of 2009, it is the only marketed oxazolidinone, although others are in development. As a protein synthesis inhibitor, it stops the growth of bacteria by disrupting their production of proteins. Resistance to linezolid has remained very low since it was first detected in 1999, although it may be increasing. When administered for short periods, linezolid is a relatively safe drug; it can be used in patients of all ages and in people with liver disease or poor kidney function. (more...)
Featured pharmacology articles:
Acetic acid – Amphetamine – Antioxidant – Bupropion – Folding@home – Icos – Linezolid – Management of multiple sclerosis – Psilocybin – Serpin – Water fluoridation
Good pharmacology articles:
Adderall – Alprazolam – Aspirin – Benzodiazepine – Benzylpiperazine – Clindamycin – Doxorubicin – Frances Oldham Kelsey – History of aspirin – Mephedrone – Metformin – Methamphetamine – Methoxyflurane – Midazolam – Nomenclature of monoclonal antibodies – Percy Lavon Julian – Receptor antagonist – Selective glucocorticoid receptor agonist – Serotonin syndrome – Serpin – Warfarin
Did you know ..
- ... that aloin (pictured), a natural stimulant-laxative produced by the aloe plant, is no longer deemed safe and effective by the US FDA?
- ... that administering a strong solution of coffee through the rectum by means of a Murphy drip was alleged to have been a treatment for shock at the Battle of Midway?
- ... that in 1985, molecular biologist Richard A. Houghten developed the "tea-bag" method for peptide selection?
- ... that analgesic nephropathy was a major cause of kidney failure until the analgesic drug phenacetin was banned from markets?
- ... that the antihypertensive drug losartan becomes a more potent blocker of angiotensin receptors after it is metabolised in the body?
- ... that vatalanib, an anti-cancer drug currently in clinical trials, inhibits the growth of new blood vessels by selectively blocking receptors of vascular endothelial growth factors?
- ... that the East German company Jenapharm synthesized steroids from hog bile because they lacked access to a source of the precursor diosgenin?
- ... that right-handed amphetamines are usually 4–10 times more potent psychostimulant drugs than left-handed ones?
- ... that worldwide the major source of morphine for medical and scientific use is not opium but poppy straw?
- ... that binding selectivity is of major importance in biochemistry and in chemical separation processes?
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Branches
- Pharmaceutics and the pharmaceutical industry: including pharmaceutical formulation, pharmaceutical manufacturing and cosmetics.
- Pharmaceutical sciences: including pharmaceutical chemistry, pharmacognosy, phytochemistry and pharmacology.
- Pharmacy practice: which is primarily concerned with optimizing the use of medications in patient care. Examples include pharmaceutical care, hospital pharmacy and clinical pharmacy.
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