Adrenergic and Cholinergic confusion!

[EmxoRenee]

I have a pharmacology exam covering, among many other things, adrenergic and cholinergic drugs coming up on Monday. I've been studying and studying, and I'm just as confused as when I began.

Is anyone able to break this down in simpler terms for me?

How do you know if a drug is an alpha agonist/antagonist, and whether it has its effects on alpha 1 or alpha 2?

How do you know if a drug is a beta agonist/antagonist, and whether it exerts its effects on beta 1 or beta 2?

I've read my textbook, my notes, and everything I can find online, and I'm still just so confused! Anyone have a way to make sense of this information?!

Thanks

[203bravo, MSN, APRN]

Hate to add to your stress.. but a lot of what you have asked is purely rote memorization. You can learn classes of drugs and that'll help, but many of the specific drugs you must memorize. For example, you can learn that beta blockers end in -olol so you can easily recognize them... But some will bind to all beta sites and some of the drugs in the class will be beta specific and you'll only know this from experience and/or memorization.

A common question is something like what drug is best to give to a patient with primary hypertension who is also an asthmatic.. you know that beta blockers are usually not the 1st drug of choice for an asthmatic and when you look at the answer list all choices end in -olol yep they are all beta blockers.. so you would have to know which one of them is beta 1 specific.

Best of luck.