Toxicología: acceso abierto

Abstracto

The Science of Toxicology: Modern Studies of Poisonous Substances

James Carter*

The science of poison is known as toxicology. Animals, bacteria, plants, and chemicals are all sources of poison. Although, in the 1520s, Paracelsus, a lecturer at the University of Basel in Switzerland, proposed that an agent's potential to produce poisoning is reliant on the dose of that substance. The median lethal dosage (LD50) was established in 1920 on this premise. The LD50 is the dose that has been shown to kill 50% of the test animals. It is one of the first screening studies used with carcinogenic, anticarcinogenic, venomous, antivenomous, toxicogenic,
anti-toxicogenic, immunogenic, and anti-immunogenic substances. Any substance that counteracts a poison by (a) chemically eliminatingthe poison, (b) physically inhibiting absorption, or (c) physiologically opposing the poison's effects in the body after absorption is referred to as an antidote.