Ateneo - UPO

The course is intended to provide the student the general principles of pharmacology, including:
- discovery, development, approval process of new drugs and their nomenclature;
- evaluation of drug benefit-risk profile;
- general principles of drug action (pharmacodynamics);
- pharmacokinetics (absorption, distribution, metabolism, excretion);
- mechanisms and effects underlying drug response variability;
- neurotransmitter systems as drug targets.

Goodman and Gilman's Pharmaceutical Basis of the Therapeutics - latest edition
Rossi, Cuomo, Riccardi: Farmacologia. Principi di base e applicazioni terapeutiche – latest edition
Rang & Dale: Pharmacology – latest edition

The main objective of the Course is to provide the basic knowledge and competences to further study single drugs in advanced courses (Farmacologia speciale). Through a qualitative-quantitative approach, the Course will allow students to understand how drugs are discovered, developed, approved, and used for the treatment/prevention of human diseases. Emphasis in the study of pharmacokinetics and dynamics will be placed on understanding the main mechanisms and effects underlying drug response variability and drug interactions. Moreover, practical exercises will be conducted in class to understand how the main pharmacokinetic and dynamic parameters are calculated experimentally.

Required background: anatomy, biochemistry, and physiology.

Formal lectures with powerpoint presentations. Exercises on the calculation of pharmacodynamic/pharmacokinetic parameters will be used to corroborate theoretical notions.

The teaching material will be provided to students through DIR.

Written examination based on two open questions on the entire content of the Course and on a pharmacokinetic/dynamic exercise.
To pass the exam, the student must demonstrate to know and to have understood at least the fundamental concepts underlying General Pharmacology, both from a theoretical (open questions) and applicative (pharmacokinetic or pharmacodynamic exercise) point of view. A wider knowledge and understanding of the contents of the program lead to a higher than sufficient evaluation; to achieve a high mark, the student must be able to use his/her knowledge to propose a critical evaluation of the pharmacokinetic/dynamic parameters obtained in the exercise and offer an in-depth discussion relating to the topics requested in the open questions.

The course is intended to provide the student the general principles of pharmacology, including:
- discovery, development and approval process of new drugs;
- clinical trials and collection of evidence concerning benefits and risks of drugs;
- general principles of drug action (pharmacodynamics);
- pharmacokinetics (absorption, distribution, metabolism, excretion);
- neurotransmitter systems as drug targets;
- pharmacogenetic biomarkers for personalized medicine;
- general principles of pharmacovigilance;
-systematic reviews and meta-analysis as tools in pharmacology;
-the pharmacology of substance abuse.

Knowledge: at the end of the course the student will know the general principles that govern drug action and clinical response.
Competences: the student will have sufficient intellectual instruments to understand and evaluate the pharmacodynamic and pharmacokinetic properties of any drug.