MOLECULAR AND APPLIED PHARMACOLOGY
Academic year and teacher
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- Versione italiana
- Academic year
- 2015/2016
- Teacher
- STEFANIA GESSI
- Credits
- 6
- Curriculum
- Biologia molecolare e cellulare
- Didactic period
- Secondo Semestre
- SSD
- BIO/14
Training objectives
- The main objective of the course is to provide students with the basic notion to evaluate and understand the cellular and molecular mechanism determinants for drug actions. Learning of the main drug classes, of their mechanisms of action, therapeutic and side effects. The students will learn about the underlying pathophysiology of many human pathologies and how drugs may improve human health. Finally, the relevance of drugs as tools to increase the knowledge about cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying physiological processes will be underlined.
The main knowledge acquired will be:
knowledge of therapeutic effects of drugs affecting SNC e peripheral system;
knowledge of side effects of drugs affecting SNC e peripheral system;
mechanisms of action of drugs;
The main skills (that are the ability to apply knowledge acquired) will be:
knowledge of the correct use of drugs in therapy;
lerning of cellular and molecular mechanism determinants for drug actions;
knowledge of pharmacological research;
evaluation of new drugs recently introduced in therapy. Prerequisites
- No formal propedeuticity is required, however basic notions on chemistry, biochemistry, physiology, anatomy, pathology and general pharmacology (pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics) are necessary.
Course programme
- The course forecasts 48 hours of teaching exerted as frontal lectures.
The biochemical and physiological processes relevant to drug action will be briefly illustrated. Effects, molecular mechanisms of action and side effects of the following class of drugs will be treated:
Drugs acting on the central nervous system (14 hours):
Ansiolitic, sedative, hypnotic drugs
Antipsychotic drugs
Antidepressant drugs
Agents for Parkinson’s disease
Agents for Alzheimer’s disease
Analgesic drugs
Anesthetic drugs
Drugs affecting cardiovascular and renal function (12 hours):
Antihypertensive drugs: alpha and beta adrenergic antagonists, renin-angiotensin inhibitors, calcium-channel blockers, vasodilators, diuretics
Anti-anginal drugs: nitro-derivatives, beta-adrenergic antagonists, calcium-channel blockers
Drugs to treat congestive heart failure: cardiac glycosides, renin-angiotensin inhibitors, beta-adrenergic antagonists and diuretics
Drugs for the treatment of hyperlipoproteinemia: statin, fibrates
Drugs affecting peripheral systems (9 hours):
Drugs for the treatment of peptic ulcers and gastroesophageal reflux disease: H2 antagonists, proton pump inhibitors (PPI) and antiacids
Drugs for the treatment of diabetes: insulin and oral hypoglycemic agents
Drugs for the treatment of asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)
Therapy of inflammation (5 hours):
Non-steroidal and steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs
Chemotherapy of neoplastic diseases (4 hours)
Biological drugs (4 hours) Didactic methods
- The course is structured in frontal lectures for a total of 48 hours. Lesson are provided on a weekly basis by taking advantage of power-point slides.
Learning assessment procedures
- The aim of the exam is to verify at which level the learning objectives previously described have been acquired and the reasoning skills developed by the student on issues related to pharmacology.
The examination is one test (multiple choice questions) constituted of 31 questions based on all the topics tackled in the class, with the aim of evaluating how deeply the student has studied the subject and how he is able to understand the basic topics analyzed. Each question is worth 1 point if correct, whilst wrong answer or no answer 0 points. To pass this test it is required to get at least 18 points out of 31 and 31 right answers correspond to 30/30 cum laude. The time allowed for this test is 1 hour. Reference texts
- Farmacologia. Principi di base e applicazioni terapeutiche. Autori F. Rossi, V. Cuomo, C. Riccardi, Edizioni Minerva Medica.
Pharmacology – Authors: H.P. Rang, M.M. Dale, J.M. Ritter, R.J. Flower, G. Henderson – Elsevier Ed.
Power point presentation of lessons.
