CLASSIFICATION OF DRUGS

CLASSIFICATION OF DRUGS:  Day to day we use various pharmaceutical products and traditional medications to treat various diseases.  With advanced research, there is no single medical condition that has not been investigated on and this makes the drug compilation a heap in the markets.  The question would be; How do clinicians and prescribers distinguish between these drugs such that they dispense the right medications for their patients?  The answer is that every drug has a class where it falls and therefore before the drug is given, there will be a specific class of it correlated with the medical condition the patient is suffering from.  On this page, we are going to look at the most common ways drugs are classified and where necessary, examples will be given.  Before we go on, previously we were talking about the effects of drugs on the human body; also known as pharmacodynamics.  If you were not following us, you can click here to read about dynamics of drugs in the human body.

1.  Depending on the microbes they kill:  Drugs can be classified according to the microbe they treat or kill.  In general, we call such drugs antimicrobial agents.  But because we have many microbes like we have been seeing in medical microbiology, the classification can continue to break down antimicrobial agents into their special targets.  In that respect we can have the subclasses like listed below with their examples;

i)  Antibacterial agents:  These are drugs that act on bacteria and they also have several other subclasses as we be seeing later.  Some of the examples of antibacterial drugs include; Penicillins, aminoglycosides and many others.

ii)  Antiviral agents:  We also have drugs that target viruses and we call the antiviral drugs/agent including those that treat HIV also known as Antiretroviral drugs (ARVs).  I have discussed much about viruses and their effects in microbiology and if you want to read about them, click on the links below.  Filoviruses  Antiviral drugs.  Some of the antiviral drugs we have include but not limited to; Zidovudine, Nevirapine, Acyclovir, Abacavir among others.

iii)  Antiprotozoal:  These are drugs that can act on protozoa microbes such as those that treat plasmodium; Artemether and artesunate, sulfonamides and those that can act against some strains of amoeba like Metronidazole.

iv)  Antifungal agents:  We also have drugs that act against fungal infections including but not limited to; Amphotericin B, Nistatin, Clotrimazole etc.

2.  Depending on their mechanism of action:  Drugs can also be classified depending on the way they interact with the body and or microbes, and this is what we call pharmacodynamics.  I have already discussed pharmacodynamics in my previous discussions and if you want to read more about it, click here.  In order for drugs to work, they have receptors onto which they bind and cause the desired effect.  Those receptors are either in different body systems, on body organs or affecting certain chemical reactions as we are going to see in the examples below.

i) Antimetabolites:  Such drugs, will be acting by blocking certain metabolic pathways in the body or in the organism for example; Salfonamides, DNA synthesis inhibitors, Methotrexate and others.

ii)  Cell wall synthesis inhibitors:  From the microbial point of view, it will be evident that these drugs impair development and production of the bacterial cell wall.  We have classes of drugs here such as penicillin, cephalosporines and vancomycin.

3.  Depending on the disease they treat:  Drugs can as well be classified basing on the disease or infections they treat.  This is one of the most broad way of categorizing drugs because, one single category will encircle many subclasses of drugs.  Some of the examples we can have here are; 1) Antihypertensives, and these are drugs that treat high blood pressure also known as hypertention.

4.  Depending on the chemical composition and structural makeup:  Drugs can also be classified depending on their chemical composition and structural makeup.  This structural classification is good but more complex for non pharmacy professionals and therefore we are going to just briefly look at it.

RELATED;

1.  DYNAMICS OF DRUGS AND THE HUMAN BODY

2.  PENICILLINS

3.  AMINOGLYCOSIDES

4.  FILOVIRUSES

5.  ACYCLOVIR

6.  SALFONAMIDES

7.  METRONIDAZOLE

8.  ARTEMISINI COMBINATION THERAPIES

9.  MEDICAL MICROBIOLOGY