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Concept
Dose (biochemistry)
Summary
A dose is a measured quantity of a medicine, nutrient, or pathogen which is delivered as a unit. The greater the quantity delivered, the larger the dose. Doses are most commonly measured for compounds in medicine. The term is usually applied to the quantity of a drug or other agent administered for therapeutic purposes, but may be used to describe any case where a substance is introduced to the body. In nutrition, the term is usually applied to how much of a specific nutrient is in a person's diet or in a particular food, meal, or dietary supplement. For bacterial or viral agents, dose typically refers to the amount of the pathogen required to infect a host. For information on dosage of toxic substances, see Toxicology. For information on excessive intake of pharmaceutical agents, see Drug overdose.
In clinical pharmacology, dose refers to dosage or amount of dose administered to a person, whereas exposure means the time-dependent concentration (often in the circulatory blood or plasma) or concentration-derived parameters such as AUC (area under the concentration curve) and Cmax (peak level of the concentration curve) of the drug after its administration. This is in contrast to their interchangeable use in other fields.
A 'dose' of any chemical or biological agent (active ingredient) has several factors which are critical to its effectiveness. The first is concentration, that is, how much of the agent is being administered to the body at once.
Another factor is the duration of exposure. Some drugs or supplements have a slow-release feature in which portions of the medication are metabolized at different times, which changes the impacts the active ingredients have on the body. Some substances are meant to be taken in small doses over large periods of time to maintain a constant level in the body, while others are meant to have a large impact once and be expelled from the body after its work is done. It's entirely dependent on the function of the drug or supplement.
The route of administration is important as well.
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Related concepts (9)
Dose (biochemistry)
A dose is a measured quantity of a medicine, nutrient, or pathogen which is delivered as a unit. The greater the quantity delivered, the larger the dose. Doses are most commonly measured for compounds in medicine. The term is usually applied to the quantity of a drug or other agent administered for therapeutic purposes, but may be used to describe any case where a substance is introduced to the body. In nutrition, the term is usually applied to how much of a specific nutrient is in a person's diet or in a particular food, meal, or dietary supplement.
Psychoactive drug
A psychoactive drug, psychopharmaceutical, psychoactive agent, or psychotropic drug is a chemical substance that changes the function of the nervous system and results in alterations of perception, mood, cognition, and behavior. These substances may be used medically, recreationally, for spiritual reasons (for example, by altering one's consciousness, as with entheogens for ritual, spiritual, or shamanic purposes), or for research. Some categories of psychoactive drugs may be prescribed by physicians and other healthcare practitioners because of their therapeutic value.
Pharmacokinetics
Pharmacokinetics (from Ancient Greek pharmakon "drug" and kinetikos "moving, putting in motion"; see chemical kinetics), sometimes abbreviated as PK, is a branch of pharmacology dedicated to determining the fate of substances administered to a living organism. The substances of interest include any chemical xenobiotic such as: pharmaceutical drugs, pesticides, food additives, cosmetics, etc. It attempts to analyze chemical metabolism and to discover the fate of a chemical from the moment that it is administered up to the point at which it is completely eliminated from the body.
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