Pharmacology is a discipline that studies the interaction and mechanism between drugs and the organisms (including pathogens), including: (1) pharmacodynamics — the study of the roles and mechanisms of drugs on the organisms; (2) pharmacokinetics — the study of the absorption, distribution, metabolism and elimination of drugs in organisms. This course combines theory with practice to study the pharmacological effects, mechanism of action, clinical application and the adverse effects of drugs, as well as the interaction and the pharmacokinetics of drugs. 

This course first introduces the basic overview of experimental pharmacology, including pharmacological experimental design, experimental record and experimental report writing, experimental animals and operation, and practical demonstration. Then our pharmacological experiments are demonstrated, including 1) effects of drugs on ileum of guinea pigs (preparation of isolated ileum of guinea pigs and maintenance of its activity in vitro; observation of the effects of acetylcholine, histamine and barium chloride on intestinal muscle contraction and analysis of underlying mechanism; observation of the effects of atropine and chlorphenamine on the effects of acetylcholine, histamine and barium chloride and analysis of underlying mechanism); 2) effects of adrenergic receptor agonists/antagonists on rabbit arterial blood pressure (observation of the regulatory effect of adrenoceptor agonists and antagonists on rabbit arterial blood pressure and analysis of underlying mechanism); 3) anticonvulsive effect of sodium phenobarbital on the nikethamide induced convulsion (introduce the convulsion model of experimental animals; convulsion effect of nikethamide in mice; observation of the therapeutic effect of phenobarbital sodium on convulsion in mice and analysis of the mechanism); 4) effect of liver injury on the action of propofol (introduction of drug metabolism, pharmacodynamic and pharmacokinetic characteristics of propofol, experimental animal model of liver injury, observation of the effect of liver injury on propofol anesthetic action and analysis of the data and mechanism). This course also includes three discussion courses, including 1) drug toxicity and drug safety (introducing the concept of minimum lethal dose, median lethal dose, treatment index, treatment window and the calculation of median lethal dose (LD50); Clinical case discussion on the application and toxicity of lithium salt); 2) writing prescription and monitoring drug therapy (introduction of prescription format, reasonable prescription, prescription content, abbreviations and symbols in the prescription; plasma drug concentration, therapeutic effect and adverse reactions of drugs, efficacy monitoring (TDM), and discuss phenytoin case); 3) discussion on clinical application cases of antibiotics (introduce the classification of antibiotics, clinical application and adverse reactions of vancomycin, metronidazole, fluoroquinolones and TMP-SMZ, pharmacological effects of cephalosporins and penicillins, etc.).

This course further helps you understand the knowledge of pharmacology and lay a foundation for rational drug use in the future.