Pharmacology Quiz on Drug Metabolism

Quiz 1

• Question 1: Toxic substances trigger vomiting by activating the choroid plexus, not the blood-brain barrier, area postrema, or median eminence.

• Question 2: Drug absorption depends on lipid solubility, ionization, body temperature, and drug concentration. Ionization is the exception.

• Question 3: Teratogenic drugs should be avoided by women of childbearing age as they can harm a developing fetus. Drugs are teratogenic if they cross the placental barrier and are highly lipid-soluble.

• Question 4: The route of administration does not affect a drug's pharmacokinetics. Lipid solubility, however, does.

Quiz 2

• Question 5: Microsomal enzymes in the liver are not highly specific; they act on multiple compounds. They are found on the smooth endoplasmic reticulum. The CYP450 family is a significant part of these enzymes. They metabolize toxins, pollutants, and drugs.

• Question 6: Biotransformation in the liver has two stages. Phase 1 involves nonsynthetic reactions, like oxidation. Phase 2 involves synthetic reactions, like conjugation.

• Question 7: The nocebo effect is illustrated when participants are warned about negative drug effects and experience them (even if the drug is inert).

Quiz 3

• Question 8: Depot binding occurs when a drug binds to inactive sites, competing for binding sites, rather than their target sites. It often occurs when drugs are excreted before binding to their target sites.

• Question 9: Bioavailability is the amount of drug remaining in the blood that is free to bind to specific target sites after administration. First-pass effects reduce a drug’s bioavailability as the drug is broken down before reaching specific target sites.

• Question 10: Drug metabolism primarily happens in the liver and makes the drug more water-soluble for excretion.

Quiz 2 - continued

• Question 1: Tolerance is a cellular adaptation to a drug, not a cross-drug effect or drug disposition.

Quiz 3 - continued

• Question 1: Pharmacodynamics describes how drugs interact with targets to produce effects, while pharmacokinetics is the body’s handling of drugs.

Pharmacokinetics and Pharmacodynamics Questions

• Question 2: Pharmacodynamics describes how drugs interact with their targets to create effects; pharmacokinetics, however, describes how the body handles the drugs.

• Question 3: Chronic use of a drug may lead to drug tolerance, which is the need for a higher dose to achieve the same effect, not sensitization (increased responsiveness), antagonism (blocking effect), or potentiation (enhanced effect).

• Question 4: Agonists and antagonists both have affinity and can interact. Only agonists have significant efficacy.

Quiz 4 - continued

• Question 5: Pharmacogenetics goals include minimizing serious side effects, selecting the best drug, and predicting treatment outcome, but not assessing addiction potential.

• Question 6: The therapeutic index compares a drug’s therapeutic dose to its toxic dose; a higher index indicates better safety.

• Question 7: Pharmacoepigenetic approaches look at factors that alter gene function, including environmental and behavioral factors, rather than only behavioral factors or individual blood types; they involve testing at different doses over time

• Question 8: Drug sensitization is a phenomenon where repeated drug use leads to increased responsiveness to later doses of the same drug.

Quiz 5 - Continued

• Question 9: Repeated drug use can cause biotransformation changes in the body, affecting both the original drug and other drugs. Enzyme induction is a type of biotransformation that accelerates drug metabolism.

• Question 10: Constitutive activity is a baseline receptor-activation state in the absence of a neurotransmitter or drug, not the steady state, maximal efficacy, or upregulation.

Quiz 6 - continued

• Question 1: The sympathetic nervous system is responsible for the "fight-or-flight" response (along with energy conservation use of specific neurotransmitters, like acetylcholine and norepinephrine) and its neurotransmitters.

• Question 2: The absolute refractory period is a time frame in which no further action potentials can occur after an action potential, due to ion channels being inactivated.

• Question 3: Action potentials are "all-or-none"; their intensity remains constant regardless of the stimulus strength.

• Question 4: Myelinated nerve fibers regenerate action potentials at nodes of Ranvier, skipping segments—a process called saltatory conduction— making nerve impulse transmission more rapid.

• Question 5: Local potentials are not all-or-none and can vary depending on the stimulus; they also spread passively from the site of generation.

Quiz 7 - continued

• Question 6: The myelin sheath is formed by oligodendroglia in the central nervous system (CNS) and Schwann cells in the peripheral nervous system.

• Question 7: Glial cells are crucial for maintaining neuronal function by providing structural support, metabolic support, and insulation.

• Question 8: Action potentials are generated at the axon hillock, the area where the axon is connected to the soma (cell body), which is primarily due to voltage-gated sodium channels.

Quiz 8 - continued

• Question 9: Some toxic substances, like saxitoxin, block voltage-gated Na+ channels, disrupting nerve impulse transmission.

• Question 10: Protein synthesis involves transcription factors activating a promoter region of DNA, leading to mRNA production. The mRNA then moves to the ribosomes for protein translation.