How does aspirin travel to your head if you take it for a headaches?
It doesn't because Molecules can't transport themselves through the body and they don't have control over where they end up.
Drug Molecules can be modified to bind to the places we want them and to the places we don't.
There are more pharmaceutical products that affect the body. In active ingredients, they enhance the absorption, stability, flavor and other qualities that are critical to allowing the drug to do its job.
The aspirin you swallow has ingredients that help it break apart in your body and prevent it from fracturing in transit.
I have been studying drug delivery for 30 years. Developing methods and designing nondrug components helps get a medication where it needs to go in the body.
Let's look at a drug from when it first enters the body to where it ends up.
The drug will be absorbed into your bloodstream after it is dissolved in your stomach and intestines. It circulates throughout the body once it's in the blood.
Drug Molecules affect the body by binding to different Cells that can cause different responses.
Even though drugs are designed to target specific receptors to produce a desired effect, it is impossible to keep them from circulating in the blood and binding to non target sites that could cause unwanted side effects.
The drugs in the blood eventually leave the body in your urine. The smell of urine after eating asparagus is caused by how quickly your kidneys clear asparagusic acid. When your urine is cleared, vitamins such as riboflavin, orVitamin B2, can cause it to be bright yellow.
Depending on the drug's chemical properties, some of the drugs you swallow don't get absorbed and end up in your poo.
Because not all of the drug is absorbed, some medications, like those used to treat high blood pressure and allergies, are taken multiple times to replace eliminated drug molecule and maintain a high enough level of drug in the blood to sustain its effects on the body.
A more efficient way to get a drug into the blood is to inject it directly into a vein. The drug circulates throughout the body and doesn't degrade in the stomach.
Many drugs that are injected are called "biotechnology drugs" and include substances from other organisms.
Monoclonal antibodies are a type of cancer drug that works by binding to and killing tumors. The drugs are injected directly into a vein because your stomach can't tell the difference between taking a therapeutic drug and eating a cheeseburger.
Drugs that need high concentrations to be effective can only be delivered through injection.
Increasing drug concentration can help make sure enough molecule are binding to the correct sites, but it also increases binding to non target sites and the risk of side effects.
One way to get a high drug concentration in the right location is to apply the drug right where it's needed, like rubbing an eyedrop on a skin rash. The amount of drug that reaches other sites is very low and unlikely to cause side effects when absorbed into the bloodstream.
The drug is delivered to the lungs and not the rest of the body.
Drug design is all about getting patients to take the right amount of their medication.
Because it's hard for many people to remember to take a drug several times a day, researchers try to design drugs that are only taken once a day or less.
The convenience of pills, inhalers, or nasal sprays is greater than the need to travel to a clinic for an injection.
Patients will take their medication when they need it if the drug is less expensive and troublesome.
Infusions or injections are the only effective ways to administer certain drugs.
It's up to the patient to make sure the drug works as designed, even with all the science that goes into understanding a disease.
Tom Anchordoquy is a professor of pharmaceutical sciences.
Under a Creative Commons license, this article is re-posted. The original article is worth a read.
All Rights Reserved © 2024
