Foundational pharmacological principles

The course intends to provide medical students with basic information on drugs' action, focusing on the general principles of pharmacodynamics and pharmacokinetics. To this aim, students will learn about the cellular and molecular targets of drug actions, with emphasis on how the pharmacological interference with these targets can produce a therapeutic outcome. Students will also learn on how a drug reaches its target in the body, crossing physiologic barriers, distributing into peripheral tissues, and eventually being metabolized and excreted.

Students will develop the aptitude to establish the appropriate pharmacotherapy on the basis of: - Pathogenetic mechanisms of disease - Mechanism of action of the drugs - Pharmacokinetic parameters for the choice of the dose, posology, administration routes -I ndividual characteristics of the patient (comorbidity, possible drug-drug interactions, pharmacogenetics).