pharmacology
Meaning of pharmacology: Pharmacology is the scientific study of how drugs interact with the body, covering their origin, chemistry, mechanisms of action, and effects.
Definition of pharmacology
Pharmacology is the scientific study of drugs, encompassing their origin, chemical structure, and effects on living systems. It examines how a drug moves through the body, how it produces its effects at the cellular and molecular level, and how factors such as dose, timing, and individual differences influence those effects.
The field is generally divided into two closely related areas. Pharmacokinetics examines how the body absorbs, distributes, breaks down, and eliminates a drug over time, while pharmacodynamics examines how the drug acts on the body, including its mechanism of action and the relationship between dose and effect.
Pharmacology provides the scientific foundation for how medications are developed, dosed, and prescribed, and it underlies practical clinical concerns such as drug interactions, side effects, and why a medication may behave differently in different people or under different conditions.
Used in a sentence
The lecture reviewed the pharmacology of the newly approved medication.
Good to know
Pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics describe two different aspects of a drug's behavior, one concerning how the body processes the drug and the other concerning how the drug acts on the body, and both influence how a medication is used.
Word origin
Where “pharmacology” comes from
Formed from Greek pharmakon, meaning drug or medicine, and logos, meaning study or reasoning.