Hot answers tagged pharmacology
26
Salt water may have anti-septic properties due to the effect it has on water potential. Pure water has a water potential (Ψ) of zero. A concentrated salt solution has a lower (more-negative) water potential. The water potential of the salt solution is likely to be more negative than that of the pathogen's cytoplasm; the salt solution is therefore referred ...
20
There are several issues here:
1) Any mucous membrane is a specialized tissue for absorption.
Mucous membranes are indeed not so good for passive diffusion, that makes them absolutely perfect tools for active absorption of certain substances, almost independently from the membrane type. To provide some examples: many drugs like cocaine are inhaled and ...
16
This information is all strictly for Entonox - a brand of analgesic gas comprising 50% Oxygen (O2) and 50% Nitrous Oxide (N2O), Laughing Gas. This mixture is known as 'Gas and Air' and is in very common use.
The active ingredient in Entonox is of course the nitrous oxide, so the discussion of the mechanism below refers solely to the N2O as you asked for.
...
15
No
There are several reasons why this might not be true, as Alexander has discussed. An antibiotic often has a molecular target that isn't present in all bacteria, it's extremely hard to get antibiotics to certain parts of your body, and some bacteria will be defended against a antibiotic attack by biofilms, resistance mechanisms, and sheer statistical ...
14
Bacteria have a mesh-like structure surrounding their plasma membrane called a cell wall. The cell wall is made up of peptidoglycan polymers that form a rigid crystalline structure that helps protect the osmotic pressure of the bacterial cytoplasm.
Penicillin and other β-lactams work by inhibiting the final step of peptidoglycan synthesis, which ...
12
IDPs are indeed attractive drug targets and there are ongoing efforts to develop drug molecules that block interactions between a disordered and a structured protein. According to this relatively recent paper, however, these efforts have not brought a drug on the market, yet.
A few promising studies have shown drug-like molecules that inhibit ...
12
Just a quick answer: No, there is no way to kill all bacteria in your body once they are there. The only way to keep a person sterile is to prevent any bacteria entering the guts during and all time after the birth. Look for gnotobiology and gnotobionts to learn more about these organisms (including humans).
Here are some reasons why:
Most antibiotics ...
10
It's worth noting that earlier this month a large body of resveratrol research was retracted:
The University of Connecticut, in what clearly seems like an attempt to get ahead of damaging news, has announced an “extensive”
investigation into research misconduct involving one of its
scientists, Dipak K. Das.
According to a press release, the ...
9
I have been working on this problem for quite some time now and believe me getting specific binding is a real issue with IDRs. Also, since these regions dont form core structure of the protein, the residues are less conserved (more prone to mutations). So in case of evolving drug-resistance contributing proteins this become a bottleneck.
I have done some ...
8
The WHO has their own methodology, the Anatomical Therapeutic Chemical (ATC, thank you commenter) classification system, for organizing such data (its impetus is comparing results between studies).
Also, if you have $900 sitting around, you can get a subscription for the United States Pharmacopeia. I'm not sure if that can be spread across multiple ...
8
Paracetamol is a pain killer, it does not treat the cause of your illness, it only alleviates the symptoms. From its wikipedia page:
Paracetamol [...], chemically named
N-acetyl-p-aminophenol, is a widely used over-the-counter analgesic
(pain reliever) and antipyretic (fever reducer).
So, paracetamol does not make you better. Your immune system ...
7
If you search clinicaltrials.gov (maintained by the NIH) for "resveratrol", you'll find 44 clinical trials, many of them ongoing or not yet started.
A recent review by Smoliga JM et al states in the abstract:
"Although the supporting research in laboratory models is quite substantial, only recently data has emerged to describe the effects of resveratrol ...
7
In a nutshell: in order to pass through the blood-brain barrier (BBB) the substance has to mimick soee properties of the substances that are allowed to pass through.
There are different types of "transporters" -- integral proteins going through the cell membranes and accounting for the active transport of the substances they can actively bind to. Smaller ...
7
I can't speak to the causes of hypotension, but you are indeed correct, caffeine is a stimulant. As a stimulant, there is a well documented acute period of hypertension that lasts for up to 4 hours. Interestingly, there is no causal link established between caffiene consumption and chronic hypertension leading to cardiovascular disease (see here and here).
...
6
Methyl cellulose is a dry binder. It is used to make a pill with a small mass of active ingredient and as much binder as required to make the pill a manageable size.
The following properties make methyl cellulose a good dry binder:
inexpensive
non-allergic
vegetarian
soluble in cold water
non-digestable
nontoxic
Most of this information is from the ...
5
As to the subject line, yes, lipid substances or any non-polar small molecule will enter the skin cells and the body below. The reason is because cell membranes simply consist of fatty substance that behaves like a solvent for other lipids.
As to the specific question about this product, Monovin A. This is a veterinary product and the producer, Laboratórios ...
5
This may be the paper you are looking for:
Ongaroraa DSB, Gutb J, Rosenthalb PJ, Masimirembwac CM, Chibale K. 2012. Benzoheterocyclic amodiaquine analogues with potent antiplasmodial activity: Synthesis and pharmacological evaluation. Bioorganic & Medicinal Chemistry Letters, 22(15): 5046–5050, doi:10.1016/j.bmcl.2012.06.010.
5
I don't know anything about this topic, but I did find this recent paper:
Kamaljit Singh,Hardeep Kaur, Kelly Chibale, Jan Balzarini, Susan Little, Prasad V. Bharatam (2012) 2-Aminopyrimidine based 4-aminoquinoline anti-plasmodial agents. Synthesis, biological activity, structure–activity relationship and mode of action studies. European Journal of ...
5
The situation is definitely an extremely complex one, and you should probably forget about having an exact equation to define it.
When talking about the effects of a substance on the organism there are several factors to take into account. These are generally put together under the term pharmacodynamics.
Some of the factor to take into account are:
The ...
4
There are many different reasons for an acute pain and inflammation (both directly via pain receptors, and indirectly via swelling etc.) plays not the least role in this phenomenon. Therefore the combination of a classic analgesic without anti-inflammatory activity (as paracetamol) with a strong anti-inflammatory agent (as ibuprofen) is a reasonable one and ...
4
Here is a link to a survivalist blog with a protocol for making penicillin. (I'm not recommending this by the way.)
Is it possible that the reference to the goat in Lucifer's Hammer is for the extraction of insulin (from the pancreas)? Have a look at the Wikipedia entry for Eva Saxl - in Shanghai during WWII her husband kept her alive with insulin extracted ...
4
Acetylsalicylate deacetylase is the enzyme responsible for this reaction.
Precisely, the present investigation reveals that the hydrolysis of aspirin in liver, kidney and probably other tissues of
rats is catalyzed by two highly substrate specific microsomal
esterases, ASA esterase I and II active at acidic and slightly
alkaline pH, respectively. ...
4
Yes, both tea (black tea at least, English speakers usually mean black tea when they say tea anyway) and coffee have caffeine which is addictive.
Apparently, being able to correctly reply to this question involves defining the word "addiction". My guess is that the negative connotation of the word "addiction" will cause some pressure to not use it.
Here's ...
4
The goal of the vaccine is to provoke an immune answer, therefore some degree of inflammation is expected in order for the vaccine to work.
Since you get the shot intramuscularily, intradermally or subcutaneously, it is local, and the inflammation does not spread. The reason why your whole arm seems to hurt (rather than the place where the vaccine was ...
3
Resveratrol has recently been shown to induce cellular senescence (at least at high concentrations, see here) which has the potential to accelerate ageing. Senescent cells display and highly inflammatory phenotype which could damage tissues if not removed. However, Resveratrol itself is rapidly metabolised and it may be these metabolites that have health ...
3
Drugs do not have to degrade after their expiration date and passing the expiration date has more than one possible meaning.
First of all chemical compounds vary in their susceptibility to breakdown over time. If they are kept away from oxygen, high temperatures (or kept in very low temperatures), and they are of a robust chemical nature, they might be ...
3
Yes, the blood from the hepatic artery (proper) and the portal vein mix in the sinusoids of the liver. The hepatic vein supplies about 75% of the blood to the liver, and the hepatic artery the remaining 25%. Because the portal vein provides such a large part of the blood supply to the liver, then any disease that causes the blood to build up can cause portal ...
3
In the publication by Leibbrandt et al.[1], it could be shown that the iota-carrageenan directly binds to viruses and thereby prevents the attachment to cells. This is a critical step in the viral life-cycle and therefore replication is reduced. Iota carrageenan rather acts unspecifically and besides influenza also other viruses such as human Rhinoviruses ...
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