• Question: how do you know what drugs are bad or good

    Asked by 263drug38 to Hannah, Jenny, Oli, Steven on 15 Nov 2016. This question was also asked by 248drug42, 268drug42.
    • Photo: Oliver Charity

      Oliver Charity answered on 15 Nov 2016:


      Hi,

      Finding out whether a drug is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ is usually done during drug testing, which includes rigorous tests on animals and then human trials. Even if a drug has lots of side effects, it might be useful for some patients. This is the question doctors have to have in mind: are the bad parts of a drug going to outweight the good parts of a drug? If so, it might not be good to prescribe this drug to someone.

      Oli

    • Photo: Jenny Batson

      Jenny Batson answered on 15 Nov 2016:


      Hi
      First you have to decide what drug you are looking for; how do you want it to work, who do you want to treat, what stage disease will they have, can the drug have any side effects or none at all (in children or pregnancy for example).. There are lots of questions. Then you have to research the drug to test its effects and try to answer these questions. Then you think about the benefits and the risks. Drugs have to be tested in lots of experiments in the lab in test tubes, in cells, in animals and then in patients. A good drug will alter the disease to improve patient health without side effects and with good properties so it gets to the right place in the body and isn’t immediately broken down.
      Jenny

    • Photo: Hannah Bolt

      Hannah Bolt answered on 16 Nov 2016:


      Hi 263drug38,

      That’s a good question 🙂

      As with most things, too much of a good thing can also be bad. For example, most people would say paracetamol is a ‘good’ drug as it can help reduce pain. However too much paracetamol will kill a person.

      To work out which are good and bad drugs, scientists must thoroughly test it.

      First, we start testing the drug in ‘in vitro’ assays. This means we do testing outside of a biological system where there is no risk to life. At this stage we also test chemical and physical properties of a drug, for example, how stable it is or how we might want to use the drug (i.e. as a pill or injection).

      Then if the drug passes these tests we move towards using the drug in insects, then animals and finally humans in ‘clinical trials’. The aim of all these experiments is to work out the dose needed of the drug to have a positive effect without causing too many side effects, to check the drug is safe for use in patients and to work out if there are any unwanted side effects.

      Overall, most drugs will have both positive and negative effects. Scientists just have to balance the good against the bad to decide whether a drug is a ‘good’ one or a ‘bad’ one.

      Hannah

    • Photo: Steven Street

      Steven Street answered on 18 Nov 2016:


      Hi,

      Well that depends on your definition of bad and good! Once you have a drug which you want to investigate, you have to test it thoroughly. This means checking exactly what it does to the target, and what it does to cells, and what it does to animals, organs and people! After all of this testing, you get a good idea of what effects it has. Then you can decide if it’s good or bad! (That also depends on what you intend to use it for 🙂 )

      Steve

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