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Drug metabolism is the metabolic breakdown of drugs by living organisms, usually through specialized enzymatic systems. More generally, xenobiotic metabolism (from the Greek xenos "stranger" and biotic "related to living beings") is the set of metabolic pathways that modify the chemical structure of xenobiotics, which are compounds foreign to an organism's normal biochemistry, such as any drug ...
First-pass metabolism may occur in the liver (for propranolol, lidocaine, clomethiazole, and nitroglycerin) or in the gut (for benzylpenicillin and insulin). [4] The four primary systems that affect the first pass effect of a drug are the enzymes of the gastrointestinal lumen, [5] gastrointestinal wall enzymes, [6] [7] [8] bacterial enzymes [5] and hepatic enzymes.
ADME is the four-letter abbreviation (acronym) for absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion, and is mainly used in fields such as pharmacokinetics and pharmacology. The four letter stands for descriptors quantifying how a given drug interacts within body over time.
Sometimes drugs are formulated in an inactive form that is designed to break down inside the body to form the active drug. These are called prodrugs.The reasons for this type of formulation may be because the drug is more stable during manufacture and storage as the prodrug form, or because the prodrug is better absorbed by the body or has superior pharmacokinetics (e.g., lisdexamphetamine).
Pharmacologists have linked drugs to glucuronic acid to allow for more effective delivery of a broad range of potential therapeutics. Sometimes toxic substances are also less toxic after glucuronidation. The conjugation of xenobiotic molecules with hydrophilic molecular species such as glucuronic acid is known as phase II metabolism.
In practice, the drug concentration is measured at certain discrete points in time and the trapezoidal rule is used to estimate AUC. In pharmacology, the area under the plot of plasma concentration of a drug versus time after dosage (called “area under the curve” or AUC) gives insight into the extent of exposure to a drug and its clearance ...
Whether a drug is taken with or without food will also affect absorption, other drugs taken concurrently may alter absorption and first-pass metabolism, intestinal motility alters the dissolution of the drug and may affect the degree of chemical degradation of the drug by intestinal microflora.
In pharmaceutical sciences, drug interactions occur when a drug's mechanism of action is affected by the concomitant administration of substances such as foods, beverages, or other drugs. A popular example of drug–food interaction is the effect of grapefruit on the metabolism of drugs .