What are the drug tolerance and drug resistance?

In the process of medication, there are sometimes obvious individual differences: one is tolerance, and the other is drug resistance. The former is aimed at the human body; The latter is aimed at pathogens. The differences between words have different meanings.

The so-called tolerance means that the patient's responsiveness to a drug is very low, but it can't cause a reaction when taken at a dose that most people can already take effect, and even the curative effect can only appear at a toxic dose, which shows that the patient has strong tolerance to the drug. Except for a few cases related to congenital inheritance, tolerance is acquired and has important clinical significance. Outstanding examples, such as someone taking a regular dose of sleeping pills before going to bed, play a hypnotic role; However, for a person who takes sleeping pills for a long time, the sensitivity to the drug gradually decreases, and the efficacy also weakens. It is necessary to continuously increase the dosage to obtain the original curative effect. Over time, it will not only produce tolerance, but also become addictive. Some painkillers, morphine, hormones and ethanol have a similar situation. The mechanism of tolerance is mainly due to the adaptability of the reaction cells of nerve tissue in vivo to drugs, and secondly related to the amount of drug enzymes in a single hepatocyte microsome, that is, after drugs enter the body, the secretion of drug enzymes in the liver increases obviously, which accelerates the destruction of drugs, reduces their effects and leads to the formation of tolerance. The main method to prevent tolerance is that the medication time should be short rather than long, and it can be used alternately with other drugs with the same curative effect.

Drug resistance, also known as drug resistance, means that the reactivity of pathogens (such as bacteria) decreases after repeated contact with certain antibacterial drugs, so that bacteria eventually develop drug resistance and are no longer inhibited or killed. Sometimes pathogens can also produce resistance to other colon and similar antibacterial drugs, which is called cross-resistance, which has become a difficult problem in clinical application of antibacterial drugs to treat infectious diseases. The key to prevent drug resistance is not to abuse antibacterial drugs at ordinary times. If possible, it is best to do drug sensitivity test before prescribing drugs. When using antibacterial drugs, the dosage should be sufficient and the course of treatment should be appropriate; You can also choose similar antibacterial drugs with similar curative effects to use alternately.