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Drug tolerance or drug insensitivity is a pharmacological concept describing subjects' reduced reaction to a drug following its repeated use. Increasing its dosage may re-amplify the drug's effects; however, this may accelerate tolerance, further reducing the drug's effects.
Cross-tolerance is a phenomenon that occurs when tolerance to the effects of a certain drug produces tolerance to another drug. It often happens between two drugs with similar functions or effects—for example, acting on the same cell receptor or affecting the transmission of certain neurotransmitters .
Drug intolerance or drug sensitivity refers to an inability to tolerate the adverse effects of a medication, generally at therapeutic or subtherapeutic doses. Conversely, a patient is said to be "tolerating" a drug when they can tolerate its adverse effects.
Tolerability, however, is often relative to the severity of the medical condition a drug is designed to treat. [1] For instance, cancer patients may tolerate significant pain or discomfort during a chemotherapeutic study with the hope of prolonging survival or finding a cure, whereas patients experiencing a benign condition, such as a headache ...
Even less safe are drugs such as digoxin, a cardiac glycoside; its therapeutic index is approximately 2:1. [12] Other examples of drugs with a narrow therapeutic range, which may require drug monitoring both to achieve therapeutic levels and to minimize toxicity, include dimercaprol, theophylline, warfarin and lithium carbonate.
Therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) is a branch of clinical chemistry and clinical pharmacology that specializes in the measurement of medication levels in blood. Its main focus is on drugs with a narrow therapeutic range , i.e. drugs that can easily be under- or overdosed. [ 1 ]
The increased GABA inhibition on the neural systems caused by benzodiazepines is counteracted by the body's development of tolerance to the drug's effects; the development of tolerance occurs as a result of neuroadaptations, which result in decreased GABA activity and increased excitability of the glutamate system; these adaptations occur as a ...
Tachyphylaxis (Greek ταχύς, tachys, "rapid", and φύλαξις, phylaxis, "protection") is a medical term describing an acute, sudden decrease in response to a drug after its administration (i.e., a rapid and short-term onset of drug tolerance). [1] It can occur after an initial dose or after a series of small doses.