A drug is a substance which may have medicinal, intoxicating, performance enhancing or other effects when taken or put into a human body or the body of another animal and is not considered a food or exclusively a food.
What is considered a drug rather than a food varies between cultures, and distinctions between drugs and foods and between kinds of drug are enshrined in laws which vary between jurisdictions and aim to restrict or prevent drug use. Even within a jurisdiction, however, the status of a substance may be uncertain or contested with respect to both whether it is a drug and how it should be classified if at all. There is no single, precise definition, as there are different meanings in drug control law, government regulations, medicine, and colloquial usage.
In pharmacology, a drug is "a chemical substance used in the treatment, cure, prevention, or diagnosis of disease or used to otherwise enhance physical or mental well-being." Drugs may be prescribed for a limited duration, or on a regular basis for chronic disorders.
Recreational drugs are chemical substances that affect the central nervous system, such as opioids or hallucinogens. They may be used for perceived beneficial effects on perception, consciousness, personality, and behavior. Some drugs can cause addiction and/or habituation.
Drugs are usually distinguished from endogenous biochemicals by being introduced from outside the organism. For example, insulin is a hormone that is synthesized in the body; it is called a hormone when it is synthesized by the pancreas inside the body, but if it is introduced into the body from outside, it is called a drug. Many natural substances, such as beers, wines, and psychoactive mushrooms, blur the line between food and recreational drugs, as when ingested they affect the functioning of both mind and body and some substances normally considered drugs such as DMT (Dimethyltryptamine) are actually produced by the human body in trace amounts.
Read more about Drug: Etymology, Medication, Spiritual and Religious Use, Self-improvement, Recreational Drug Use, Administering Drugs
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... and excretion (ADME) study, using tritium (3H) labelled drug, temazepam was well absorbed and found to have minimal (8%) first pass drug metabolism ... The unchanged drug was 96% bound to plasma proteins ... The blood level decline of the parent drug was biphasic with the short half-life ranging from 0.4-0.6 hours and the terminal half-life from 3.5–18.4 hours (mea ...
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... co-founder of Amgen, Icos focused on the development of drugs to treat inflammatory disorders ... the company conducted clinical trials of twelve drugs, three of which reached the last phase of clinical trials ... Icos is famous for tadalafil (Cialis), a drug used to treat erectile dysfunction ...
... Drugs function by binding to specific locations on target molecules and causing a certain desired change, such as disabling the target or causing a conformational change ... Ideally, a drug should act very specifically and bind only to its target without interfering with other biological functions ... Computer-assisted drug design has the potential to expedite and lower the costs of drug discovery ...
Famous quotes containing the word drug:
“Upon entering my vein, the drug would start a warm edge that would surge along until the brain consumed it in a gentle explosion. It began in the back of the neck and rose rapidly until I felt such pleasure that the world sympathizing took on a soft, lofty appeal.”
—Gus Van Sant, U.S. screenwriter and director, and Dan Yost. Bob Hughes (Matt Dillon)
“Most people aren’t appreciated enough, and the bravest things we do in our lives are usually known only to ourselves. No one throws ticker tape on the man who chose to be faithful to his wife, on the lawyer who didn’t take the drug money, or the daughter who held her tongue again and again. All this anonymous heroism.”
—Peggy Noonan (b. 1950)
“Whoever grows angry amid troubles applies a drug worse than the disease and is a physician unskilled about misfortunes.”
—Sophocles (497–406/5 B.C.)