Read about it tonight in answer to a question, though I do not understand what it means.
2006-11-15 09:50:56 · 7 answers · asked by Anonymous in Science & Mathematics ➔ Medicine
A half-life is the amount of time it takes for the concentration of a substance in the body to be reduced by half.
2006-11-15 09:52:04 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 2⤊ 0⤋
The duration of action of a drug is known as its half life. This is the period of time required for the concentration or amount of drug in the body to be reduced by one-half. We usually consider the half life of a drug in relation to the amount of the drug in plasma. A drug’s plasma half-life depends on how quickly the drug is eliminated from the plasma. A drug molecule that leaves plasma may have any of several fates. It can be eliminated from the body, or it can be translocated to another body fluid compartment such as the intracellular fluid or it can be destroyed in the blood. The removal of a drug from the plasma is known as clearance and the distribution of the drug in the various body tissues is known as the volume of distribution. Both of these pharmacokinetic parameters are important in determining the half life of a drug.
Here is the symbol to represent the half-life: t½
2006-11-15 18:50:14 · answer #2 · answered by Tree 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
It is the time taken for the concentration of the drug/medication to reduce to half.
It is a convenient measure of how long drugs linger in the body. So at one half-life the concentration is halved, two half-lives reduced to a quarter and so on. It is a v. good approximation to the way drugs are processed by the body.
(The idea is like half-life in radio active material. It is based on a model of a certain fixed, independent probability of each molecule of the drug being metabolized in a certain period of time).
2006-11-15 18:05:29 · answer #3 · answered by Hal W 3 · 1⤊ 0⤋
If this is the same idea as in radioactivity measures, then it is the time taken for half of the medication to be excreted from the body.
2006-11-15 18:10:48 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 0⤋
The full name you are looking for is the Elimination Half Life. There is a good explanation on Wikepedia.
2006-11-15 20:46:32 · answer #5 · answered by Ste 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
its how long it takes for a certain drug/medication to halve in dosage whie inside the body
ie how long it takes for all traces to leave the body
2006-11-15 17:52:50 · answer #6 · answered by missree 5 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Not whole
2006-11-15 17:52:55 · answer #7 · answered by Alicat 6 · 0⤊ 2⤋