25,729 articles
Drug discovery
Drug discovery: identifying new medicines from target identification through lead optimization to clinical candidate selection. Covers timelines (12–15 years), costs ($161M–$4.54B estimates), screening methods, phenotypic vs target-based paradigms, and AI since 2023.
Drug Dosage Calculations
Drug dosage calculations convert a prescriber's order, drug concentration, and patient weight into an exact dose using dimensional analysis, ratio-proportion, or the desired-over-have formula; unit errors and decimal misplacement drive most dosing errors.
Drug injection
Drug injection is the administration of psychoactive drugs with a syringe and needle, chiefly intravenously. Also called injection drug use, it affects 10.2–23.7 million people worldwide and carries risks of HIV, hepatitis C, overdose, and tissue damage.
Drug Instillation
Drug instillation places liquid medication drop by drop or in measured volume into a body cavity: eye drops, nasal drops, ear drops, and catheter-based intravesical bladder therapy, with pharmacokinetics and evidence.
Drug interaction
Drug interaction: a drug, food, herb, or disease altering another drug's pharmacokinetics or pharmacodynamics. Covers CYP-mediated mechanisms, 1960s cheese-tyramine history, divergent interaction knowledge bases, and unproven alert benefit.
Drug Legislation
Drug legislation is the body of statutes governments use to control the testing, approval, labeling, and surveillance of medicines, centered in the US on the 1938 Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act and the FDA.
Drug liberalization
Drug liberalization: relaxing or removing prohibition-based drug policies, from decriminalization of personal use to regulated legalization. Key examples: Portugal's Law 30/2000 dissuasion commissions, Oregon Measure 110, Thailand's 2022 cannabis decriminalization and 2025 rollback.
Drug metabolism
Drug metabolism (biotransformation) is the enzymatic two-phase conversion of drugs into metabolites, mainly by hepatic cytochrome P450 enzymes, covering first-pass metabolism, induction, inhibition, pharmacogenetics, and toxicity.
Drug nomenclature
Drug nomenclature: the WHO International Nonproprietary Name (INN) system, begun in 1953, assigns unique generic names with class stems to pharmaceutical substances, alongside national names like USAN and BAN and distinct brand names.
Drug overdose
Drug overdose: toxic or lethal excess dosing of opioids, stimulants, sedatives, or acetaminophen; ~125,000 opioid overdose deaths globally (2019), ~105,000 US deaths (2023); naloxone reverses opioid overdose.
Drug paraphernalia
Drug paraphernalia: equipment primarily intended for making or using controlled substances, defined by 21 U.S.C. §863 and state laws patterned on the DEA's Model Act; covers pipes, syringes, and test strips, with harm-reduction exemptions expanding since 2010.
Drug policy of Nazi Germany
Drug policy of Nazi Germany: narcotics law continuing Weimar-era Opium Act rules, methamphetamine Pervitin (Temmler, 1937) mass-issued to the Wehrmacht, restricted in 1941, plus anti-smoking campaigns and the Blitzed controversy.
Drug policy of Portugal
Portuguese drug policy: Law 30/2000, in force July 1, 2001, decriminalized personal drug possession and use (up to a ten-day supply) as misdemeanors handled by dissuasion commissions, with trafficking still criminal and harm-reduction services nationwide.
Drug Pulse Therapy
Drug pulse therapy (pulse drug therapy, MeSH D020551) is intermittent administration of very high drug doses, typically intravenous methylprednisolone, over short periods, used since 1976 for lupus nephritis, transplant rejection, and dermatologic autoimmune disease.
Drug reaction with eosinophilia and systemic symptoms
DRESS syndrome (drug reaction with eosinophilia and systemic symptoms), also called DiHS, is a severe delayed T-cell drug hypersensitivity reaction with rash, fever, eosinophilia, and organ involvement 2–8 weeks after drug exposure; mortality about 10%.
Drug rehabilitation
Drug rehabilitation (rehab) is medical and psychosocial treatment for substance use disorder, spanning detoxification, outpatient, and residential care. Standard of care combines medications (methadone, buprenorphine, naltrexone) with behavioral therapies; only 11 percent of people with opioid use disorder receive medication.
Drug research
Drug Research (ISSN 2194-9379) is a Thieme peer-reviewed pharmacology journal in Stuttgart, published since 2013 as the continuation of Arzneimittel-Forschung (1951-2012), covering translational medicine and drug development.
Drug sensitivity testing
Drug sensitivity testing is the laboratory exposure of living cells, tissues, or microorganisms to drugs followed by measurement of viability or growth, underpinning functional precision medicine in oncology.
Drug Substitution
Drug substitution is the practice of replacing a prescribed drug with another expected to produce an equivalent effect, either a generic equivalent or a chemically different therapeutic alternative.
Drug Tapering
Drug tapering, also called gradual dose reduction, is the supervised stepwise lowering of a medication dose to stop or reduce drugs such as opioids, benzodiazepines, and antidepressants while limiting withdrawal symptoms and relapse.
Drug test
Drug test: analysis of urine, saliva, blood, hair, or other samples to detect illegal drugs or misused medicines. Two-step immunoassay screen plus GC-MS/LC-MS/MS confirmation; US federal testing governed by HHS/SAMHSA Mandatory Guidelines.
Drug tolerance
Drug tolerance: diminished response to a drug after repeated exposure, requiring higher doses; distinct from tachyphylaxis, dependence, and sensitization (reverse tolerance), with pharmacokinetic, pharmacodynamic, and learned mechanisms.
Drug utilization review
Drug utilization review is an ongoing program that evaluates prescribing, dispensing, and patient use of medications against criteria to ensure drugs are used safely and effectively.
Drug utilization study
A drug utilization study examines the marketing, distribution, prescription, and use of drugs in a society, emphasizing their medical, social, and economic consequences to inform pharmaceutical policy.
Drug withdrawal
Drug withdrawal: symptom cluster on stopping or reducing a substance after dependence. Covers mechanisms, timelines for alcohol, opioids, benzodiazepines, stimulants, nicotine; CIWA-Ar, COWS scales; tapering guidance.
Drug-eluting stent
Drug-eluting stent (DES): coronary stent coated with sirolimus, paclitaxel, everolimus, or similar drugs released to prevent restenosis after angioplasty; first implanted 1999, reduces repeat revascularization versus bare-metal stents but requires dual antiplatelet therapy.
Drug-induced alopecia
Drug-induced alopecia (ICD-11 EH72.0) is medication-caused, usually reversible, non-scarring hair loss via anagen effluvium (days to weeks, chemotherapy) or telogen effluvium (2–4 months, anticoagulants, retinoids, psychotropics); scalp cooling prevents chemotherapy-induced loss.
Drug-induced anaphylaxis
Drug-induced anaphylaxis (DIA, ICD-11 4A84.1) is a severe, potentially fatal systemic hypersensitivity reaction to drugs such as NSAIDs, antibiotics, and anesthetics, involving IgE-mediated, IgG/complement, or direct MRGPRX2 mast cell mechanisms, diagnosed clinically with tryptase testing and treated with epinephrine.
Drug-induced and toxic bradycardia
Drug-induced and toxic bradycardia is a slow heart rate caused by drugs such as beta-blockers and digoxin, or by conditions like hypothyroidism and hypothermia, and is often reversible.
Drug-induced angioedema
Drug-induced angioedema (ICD-11 EH61.1): non-allergic swelling caused by drugs, chiefly ACE inhibitors via bradykinin accumulation; nonpruritic, without urticaria, unresponsive to antihistamines, treated by drug withdrawal and off-label bradykinin-targeted agents.