Pharmacology High-Yield Facts: Firsts, Fathers & Scientists

BASIC INTRODUCTION OF PHARMACOLOGY 

📌 KEY POINTS:

🔺Essential Drugs:
• First Model list by WHO in 1977
• First National EDL of India in 1996
• Current edition of India is 17th National list of Essential Medicines. It was modified in 2011. It contains 348 drugs

🔺Uppsala Monitoring Centre (Sweden) is the international collaborating centre for Pharmacovigilance.
In India it is Central Drugs Standard Control Organization (CDSCO)

🔺Vasomotor reversal of Dale was first demonstrated with ergot alkaloids.

🔎 SOURCES OF DRUGS :

• The sources of drugs could be natural or synthetic.
  
• Natural sources Drugs can be obtained from:

1. Plants, e.g. atropine, morphine, quinine, and digoxin.
2. Animals, e.g. insulin, heparin, gonadotrophins and antitoxic sera.
3. Minerals, e.g. magnesium sulphate, aluminium hydroxide, iron, sulphur and radioactive isotopes.
4. Microorganisms-antibacterial agents are obtained from some bacteria and fungi. ex. penicillin, cephalosporins, tetracyclines and other antibiotics.
5. Human-some drugs are obtained from human beings, e.g. immunoglobulins from blood, growth hormone from anterior pituitary and chorionic gonadotrophins from the urine of pregnant women.

• Synthetic most drugs used now are synthetic, e.g. quinolones, omeprazole, neostigmine, sulfonamides.