📘Step 1. Curriculum Coverage
💊 Pharmacology
Bioassay and Standardization
- Define bioassay and standardization.
- Describe the relative importance of bioassay compared with physical or chemical assays.
- Describe the three-point bioassay.
Drug–Receptor Pharmacodynamics
- Define pharmacodynamics.
- Define agonist, antagonist, partial agonist and inverse agonist with examples.
- Describe receptors.
- Define orphan, serpentine and spare receptors.
- Describe biochemical and cellular sites of drug targets.
- Describe intracellular second-messenger systems and important second messengers.
- Describe receptor up-regulation and down-regulation.
- Define drug selectivity and specificity.
Dose–Response Relationships
- Define graded and quantal dose-response curves.
- Describe graded and quantal dose-response curves.
- Explain limitations of graded dose-response curves and the role of quantal curves.
- Describe the significance of constructing dose-response curves.
- Explain the advantages of plotting log-dose values.
Therapeutic Safety
- Define therapeutic index and explain its clinical importance.
- Apply the formula for calculating therapeutic index.
- Define median effective, toxic and lethal doses.
- Enlist drugs with narrow and broad therapeutic indices.
- Define protective index and differentiate it from therapeutic index.
- Define therapeutic window and explain its clinical importance.
Potency, Efficacy and Antagonism
- Define potency and efficacy and describe them with examples.
- Explain the clinical importance of efficacy compared with potency.
- Define drug antagonism and classify its types.
- Describe chemical, physiological and pharmacological antagonism, including competitive and non-competitive antagonism, with examples.