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Major Branches of Pharmacology

Branches of Pharmacology

Pharmacology is a very wide field of study that encompasses different branches of study that play different but interrelated roles to improve people’s knowledge of drugs and how to get the best benefit from them. Some important branches of pharmacology are:

  1. Pharmacokinetics: This deals with the study of how our body responds to a drug. This includes how it is absorbed, distributed, metabolized, and the possible side effects of the drug.
  2. Chemotherapy: Chemotherapy involves treating a particular disease by using some chemicals that will the particular cells in the body that serve as a willing host to the disease.
  3. Pharmacodynamics: In opposition to pharmacokinetics, therapeutics deals with the effect of a drug on a body. This includes how the particular drug works in the body, how its concentration can affect its effect on the body, and the effect of drugs on the human body, microorganisms, and parasites.
  4. Toxicology: Toxicology is a very important branch of pharmacology that studies the side effects of different drugs on the users’ bodies. Toxicology studies the symptoms, treatment, the mode of operation of a drug. In addition, it also deals with the toxicity of some substances on the body. The focus is on the dose of the drug. This is because a medicine can be toxic if a high dose is used while the same medicine can be useful if the right dose is used.
  5. Therapeutics/Pharmacotherapeutics: Therapeutics deals with the application of the information gathered from pharmacology and that of the disease to move for the prevention of a disease or finding a permanent cure to it.
  6. Pharmacognosy: Pharmacognosy is another branch of pharmacology that is particularly concerned with studying both the chemical and physical properties of different drugs in their crude forms.
  7. Pharmacoepidemiology: When a large population of people uses a drug it may have different effects on them. The possible effects of the drug on such a huge population of people are studied in pharmacoepidemiology. To get the right result, both sick and healthy individuals will be subjected to studies in addition to collecting the diverse opinions of physicians that prescribe such a drug.
  8. Clinical Pharmacology: Clinical pharmacology is saddled with the responsibility of maximizing the effects of drugs on people, minimizing their potential side effects, generating useful data about a particular drug, and promoting wide usage of drugs that have been tested and proven to be effective with little or no side effects.
  9. Posology: When you study posology, you are studying the dosage that a drug is used. This will help you to identify its benefits and potential adverse effects.
  10. Animal pharmacology: As the name suggests, animal pharmacology concentrates on drugs’ properties in animals. That will lead to its benefits and potential danger a particular drug may pose to their lives.

Conclusion

While there are other branches of pharmacology, these are 10 of the most important branches of the course. If you study any of these branches, you are working in one way or the other to the improvement of the human health. That is essential if we really want to achieve a healthier future for ourselves and the unborn generations.

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