How are drugs developed to target specific areas (pain/allergies/disease). How do you translate scientific body knowledge into a drug that targets that area. And how do scientists determine cross reactions to other drugs or conditions. Do they have to test every combo?
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I’ll try to explain with an example: Benadryl is for allergies and is in a class of drugs called antihistamines. They are called this because they block the substance, histamine, from doing its thing in the body that causes symptoms like itching, runny nose and sneezing.
Say you’re allergic to cats. You get cat dander in your eyes which your body recognizes as a threat. Histamine starts flowing and triggering this type of response/symptoms. You take Benadryl and the drug gets absorbed and starts traveling all over the body. In most places, you won’t feel any difference but you’ll feel relief where the histamine is causing you the most discomfort. Same thing with seasonal allergies and it’s the same response and same way the drug helps.
Let’s talk briefly about side effects. If you’ve ever taken Benadryl, like most people you’ll notice it makes you tired. This is because the drug gets everywhere in your body including the brain. It blocks histamine there, too, but the effect is much different. In the brain, histamine keeps you alert and you’re blocking its effect there so you get tired.
Finally, drug to drug interactions. We get our information for interactions from a couple main sources. One is when it happens in real life. Another is when you expect an interaction to happen because we know the way drugs work in the body. This is even harder to explain but let’s give one example. Many interactions happen because of how the body processes drugs. There are substances in the liver that break down many drugs to keep them from being active for a long time or prepare them for being eliminated from the body. Sometimes when one of these substances is acting on drug A, that drug can either make the substance break down drug B faster or slower. If it breaks down drug B slower, more of drug B will still be in the body causing its effects. If it breaks down drug B faster, you may not get all the desired effects you’re looking for from drug B because it’s getting broken down too quickly.
Targeted drug therapies are way too complicated to explain and there are many ways that are being developed every day, it seems. (Source: am PharmD)
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