Significance of pharmacovigilance and its clinical implications (Editorial Article)

摘要

Drug is the single active chemical entity present in a medicine that is used for diagnosis, prevention, treatment / cure of a disease. World Health Organization has given a more comprehensive definition— "Drug is any substance or product that is used or is intended to be used to modify or explore physiological systems or pathological states for the benefit of the recipient." Pharmacodynamics is what the drug does to the body. This includes physiological and biochemical effects of drugs and their mechanism of action at organ system /subcellular / macromolecular levels. Pharmacokinetics is the effect; the body does to the drug. This refers to movement of the drug in and alteration of the drug by the body; includes absorption, distribution, biotransformation and excretion of the drug (Tripathy 2013).