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The median effective dose is the dose that produces a quantal effect (all or nothing) in 50% of the population that takes it (median referring to the 50% population base). [6] It is also sometimes abbreviated as the ED 50, meaning "effective dose for 50% of the population". The ED50 is commonly used as a measure of the reasonable expectancy of ...
For a response of 0.25a.u., Drug B is more potent, as it generates this response at a lower concentration. For a response of 0.75a.u., Drug A is more potent. a.u. refers to "arbitrary units". In pharmacology , potency or biological potency [ 1 ] is a measure of a drug's biological activity expressed in terms of the dose required to produce a ...
A loading dose is most useful for drugs that are eliminated from the body relatively slowly, i.e. have a long systemic half-life. Such drugs need only a low maintenance dose in order to keep the amount of the drug in the body at the appropriate therapeutic level , but this also means that, without an initial higher dose, it would take a long ...
Mixed agonist-antagonist opioids, such as nalbuphine, serve as a classic example of the ceiling effect; increasing the dose of a narcotic frequently leads to smaller and smaller gains in relief of pain. In many cases, the severity of side effects from a medication increases as the dose increases, long after its therapeutic ceiling has been reached.
For many drugs, severe toxicities in humans occur at sublethal doses, which limit their maximum dose. A higher safety-based therapeutic index is preferable instead of a lower one; an individual would have to take a much higher dose of a drug to reach the lethal threshold than the dose taken to induce the therapeutic effect of the drug.
Dosage typically includes information on the number of doses, intervals between administrations, and the overall treatment period. [3] For example, a dosage might be described as "200 mg twice daily for two weeks," where 200 mg represents the individual dose, twice daily indicates the frequency, and two weeks specifies the duration of treatment.
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.
High-dose chemotherapy (HDC) is a regimen of chemotherapy medicines given at larger dosages. This therapeutic strategy is used to treat some cancers, especially those that are aggressive or have a high chance of coming back. With increased doses of chemotherapy chemicals administered to the body, HDC seeks to optimize the death of cancer cells.