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Suggest pagesPortal:Pharmacy and Pharmacology
| Main page | Pharmaceutics | Medicinal chemistry | Pharmacology and Medications | Pharmacognosy and Medical Herbs |
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.
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.
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:
Antioxidant — Bupropion — Icos — Linezolid — Psilocybin — Sertraline — Treatment of multiple sclerosis — Water fluoridation
Good pharmacology articles:
Alprazolam — Aspirin — Benzodiazepine — Benzylpiperazine — CS gas — Clindamycin — Doxorubicin — Ethanol — Frances Oldham Kelsey — Heparin — History of aspirin — Homeopathy — Metformin — Midazolam — Nomenclature of monoclonal antibodies — Opium — Orlistat — Paracetamol toxicity — Percy Lavon Julian — Psychoactive drug — Receptor antagonist — Resveratrol — Selective glucocorticoid receptor agonist — Serotonin syndrome — Serpin — Vitamin C — Warfarin
- ...that a high speed tablet press (animation shown) can punch out over one million tablets an hour?
- ...that the fundamental complexity of chemical synthesis impedes many efforts at drug design?
- ...that adjuvants are sometimes used to modify the effects that a vaccine has on disease resistance by stimulating the immune system to respond to the vaccine with much more vitality?
- ... that the anabolic steroid oxandrolone was granted orphan drug status in treatment of alcoholic hepatitis, Turner's syndrome and HIV wasting syndrome?
- ...that Academy Award-winning American singer Barbra Streisand filled in a tooth gap with Aspergum when she started out in theater?
- ...that gestrinone, a medication for endometriosis that is banned by the IOC for its anabolic effects, has also been studied as a postcoital contraceptive?
- ...that Swiss pharmacologist Hartmann F. Stähelin led the R&D of both the anti-cancer drug etoposide and cyclosporine A, an immunosuppressant used in organ transplantation?
- ...that bromopyruvic acid, a simple inexpensive chemical, is being studied as a potential treatment for cancer?
- ... that after KV Pharmaceutical received an FDA-sponsored monopoly to exclusively market a drug that had been already available for five decades, it raised its price from about US$15 to US$1,500?
- ... that results from the JUPITER trial indicated that rosuvastatin may lower the relative risk of heart attacks and stroke in patients with normal cholesterol levels?
- List of pharmacies
- List of pharmacy associations
- List of pharmacy organizations in the United Kingdom
- List of diseases
- List of drugs
- List of top selling drugs
- List of pharmaceutical companies
- List of pharmacy schools
- List of pharmacy schools in the United Kingdom
- List of universities in the United Kingdom
- List of pharmacy organizations in the United Kingdom
- List of medical schools in the United Kingdom
- List of American state universities
- List of medical schools
- Pharmaceutics and Industrial pharmacy: Including Pharmaceutical technology and Dermopharmacy 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 Hospital pharmacy and Clinical pharmacy.
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