psychotropic drugs

Examples of psychotropic drugs in the following topics:

• The Chavín Civilization

  • These shamans were able to control and influence local citizens (probably partially through the use of psychotropic drugs), and were able to plan and carry out construction of temples and stone-walled galleries.

• Pharmacotherapy (Medication)

  • A psychotropic substance is one that affects the mind or mental processes.
  • Antipsychotics include drugs such as chlorpromazine and haloperidol.
  • Psychotropic substances have been used by humans for thousands of years.
  • Different disorders respond to drug therapy differently.
  • There is also a potential for the accidental misuse of prescription psychoactive drugs by elderly persons, who may have multiple drug prescriptions.

• Introduction to Biomedical Therapies

  • Some people may only need to take a psychotropic medication for a short period of time.
  • Others, with severe disorders like bipolar disorder or schizophrenia, may need to take psychotropic medication continuously for effective symptom management.
  • The exact mechanism is unknown, although it does help alleviate symptoms for people with severe depression who have not responded to traditional drug therapy (Pagnin, de Queiroz, Pini, & Cassano, 2004).
  • Effectiveness studies are complementary to understanding drug efficacy.

• Drug Cartels

• Antifungal Drugs

  • Disease-causing fungi are targeted and then drug classes are classified based on drug structure or mechanism.
  • Azole drugs are broad-spectrum drugs and treat fungal infections of the skin or mouth.
  • An example of an echinocandin based drug is Caspofungin.
  • The major classes of antifungal drugs are discussed above are not the only drugs capable of effectively targeting fungi.
  • The discovery process for effective and fungi-specific drugs is enduring and laborious, as the drugs must be specific for fungi cells.

• Transdermal Drug Administration

  • Transdermal drug delivery can be acheived by a medicated adhesive patch to deliver a dose of drug through the skin and into the bloodstream.
  • Single-layer, drug-in-adhesive: The adhesive layer of this system also contains the drug.
  • Multi-layer, drug-in-adhesive: The multi-layer, drug-in adhesive patch is similar to the single-layer system in that both adhesive layers are also responsible for releasing the drug.
  • Matrix: The matrix system has a drug layer of a semisolid matrix containing a drug solution or suspension.
  • Food and Drug Administration in December 1979.

• Allergic Responses to Drugs

  • While the drug acts as an allergen, the drug itself is not causing direct damage to the individual, but rather it is the response of an individual's immune system which is deleterious.
  • Once the body recognizes a substance as foreign (in this case an antimicrobial drug), it starts producing antibodies, specifically immunoglobulin E (IgE) against the drug.
  • The exposure to a drug may not elicit an allergic reaction during the first exposure, but after the first exposure, the body creates antibodies and memory lymphocyte cells against the drug, therefore later exposures to the drug will illicit an immune response.
  • There are many factors that can determine if an individual is sensitive to an antimicrobial drug, as with other allergens.
  • Explain the physiology of an immune response responsible for an allergic reaction to drugs

• Introduction to conditional probability (special topic)

  • Are students more likely to use marijuana when their parents used drugs?
  • If at least one parent used drugs, what is the chance their child (student) uses?
  • A student is randomly selected from the study and she does not use drugs.
  • Of these 226 students, 85 had at least one parent who used drugs:
  • A Venn diagram using boxes for the drug use data set.

• Vaccines and Anti-Viral Drugs for Treatment

  • Another way of treating viral infections is the use of antiviral drugs.
  • For influenza, drugs like Tamiflu (oseltamivir) can reduce the duration of "flu" symptoms by one or two days, but the drug does not prevent symptoms entirely .
  • Anti-HIV drugs have been able to control viral replication to the point that individuals receiving these drugs survive for a significantly longer time than the untreated.
  • When any of these drugs are used individually, the high mutation rate of the virus allows it to easily and rapidly develop resistance to the drug, limiting the drug's effectiveness.
  • The breakthrough in the treatment of HIV was the development of HAART, highly-active anti-retroviral therapy, which involves a mixture of different drugs, sometimes called a drug "cocktail."

• Effects of Drug Combinations

  • Antimicrobial drugs can interact with other drugs in deleterious ways or can be used in combination to combat microbial infections.
  • Pharmacodynamics is the field that attempts to understand the unintended effects of the use of two or more drugs.
  • It also looks at the mechanisms of drug action and the relationship between drug concentration and effect.
  • Two well described interactions between antimicrobial drugs and other drugs are between antibiotics and alcohol and antibiotics and the birth control pill.
  • This is due to the phenomenon of resistance, whereby a micro-organism gains the ability to resist an antimicrobial drug, while initially the drug effectively slowed the growth of or even killed the target micro-organism.