title: Theoretical treatment of events between the drug-receptor association and the effect.
abstract: Pharmacological stimulus is defined as a drug-induced stress in the receptor which, by various means, is then transmitted along a series of other structures in the affected biological object. When one of these consequent events is observable, it is considered to be the drug effect. These assumptions lead to the conclusions that, depending on how the initial receptor stress is propagated to other structures, the effect may be either a linear or a nonlinear function of the stimulus; that the conventional pharmacological parameters drug-receptor dissociation constant, efficacy or intrinsic activity, and total receptor concentration, are very complex, embodying a number of concentrations of components of the responding organ and a number of equilibrium constants of reactions in which these components become involved; and that all drug antagonism is competitive, but when the competition takes place, not at the receptor, but at some site between the receptor and the site of the effect, the antagonism follows noncompetitive kinetics.
mesh_terms: D007700:Kinetics; D008954:Models, Biological; D004364:Pharmaceutical Preparations / Q000378:metabolism*; D010600:Pharmacology; D011955:Receptors, Drug / Q000378:metabolism*
chemical_list: D004364:Pharmaceutical Preparations; D011955:Receptors, Drug