The Agonist-to-Antagonist Spectrum of Action of Psychopharmacologic Agents

The Agonist-to-Antagonist Spectrum of Action of Psychopharmacologic Agents

Introduction to Neuroscience

Psychiatric mental health nurse practitioners play a fundamental role in the management of psychiatric disorders. Undeniably, their knowledge regarding the pathophysiology of multifarious mental disorders need to be top notch. However, in addition to the pathophysiological knowhow, PMNHPs need to understand the various mechanisms of action of relevant medications and the manner in which they influence the central nervous system to stabilize the neurochemicals responsible for the existence of these conditions. Thus, PMNHPs require to have knowledge concerning the impact of psychopharmacological medications from their agnostic-to-antagonist spectrum of action. In addition, knowing about the roles of g-coupled proteins and ion gated channels in the entire process of managing mental health conditions becomes an important tool for these nurses. Further, other factors such as epigenetics also influence the pharmacologic action of drugs. As such, a collation of the above information may be fundamental in the prescription of medications to clients; hence, their analysis becomes important.

Agonist-To-Antagonist Spectrum of Action of Psychopharmacologic Agents

            The prescription of psychopharmacological agents occurs based on the mechanisms of action of each molecule. Fundamentally, pharmacological actions of antipsychotics such as agonism and antagonism principally influences neurotransmitters or receptors. According to scholarship on the matter, agonists are referred to as the kinds of drugs or receptor ligands that bind to certain receptors in order to produce the desired therapeutic effect (Lee & Barron, 2017). Specifically, agonists bind to receptors and modulate the activation of the receptors in order to produce the requisite action. The modulation occurs when the agonists alter the conformation of the receptor in order to optimally open the ion channel as well as induce the maximum frequency of the receptors for binding purposes. As a consequence, a maximum downstream signal transduction that has the capacity to be mediated by a receptor occurs.

The above spectrum then moves to antagonists, which are utilized to stabilize the receptor to the resting phase. In other words, the antagonists are used to return ta receptor to its state when the agonists were not available. However, the resting state occasioned by the antagonists still has certain levels of ion flowing through the channel since the ion channel is not fully closed. Therefore, the agonist-to-antagonist spectrum of pharmacological agents entails agonists that open a receptor channel to maximal frequency and amount via antagonists that retain the resting state of a receptor, and lastly to inverse agonists that close and inactivate the receptor ion channel (Stahl, 2013). In between the antagonists and agonists are partial agonists that partially influences the receptor ion channels in comparison to the two. Further, antagonists have the potential to block everything within the agonist spectrum thus ensuring that the ion channel returns to its resting state. Thus, psychopharmacological agents assume this spectrum when addressing certain mental health conditions.

Comparison of the Actions of G Couple Proteins and Ion Gated Channels

            Ion channels are important as regards the selective movement of particular ions across the membrane. One of the types of ion channels include the G couple proteins and ion gated channels. According to studies, both channels are proteins in nature and are embedded within cell membranes and they allow for the passage of ions. G Couple Proteins are composed of a continuous chain having 7 lipophilic helical segments inside the membrane, which allows it to become activated by numerous chemical messengers (Stahl, 2013). Further, the G Protein Couple Receptors are affected by two signal transduction pathways entailing Phosphatidylinositol signal pathway and cAMP signal pathway (Li, Wong, & Liu, 2014). On the other hand, whereas ion channels similarly comprise lipophilic helices in their structures, they attach to different chains hence numerous variants exist. Also called ligand gated channels, ion gated channels experience conformation alteration when a ligand is attached to them leading to the opening of a channel along the membrane to permit the passage of a specific mol