scholarly journals Disambiguating “Mechanisms” in Pharmacy: Lessons from Mechanist Philosophy of Science

Author(s):  
Ahmad Yaman Abdin ◽  
Claus Jacob ◽  
Lena Kästner

Talk of mechanisms is ubiquitous in the natural sciences. Interdisciplinary fields such as biochemistry and pharmacy frequently discuss mechanisms with the assistance of diagrams. Such diagrams usually depict entities as structures or boxes and activities or interactions as arrows. While some of these arrows may indicate causal or componential relations, others may represent temporal or operational orders. Importantly, what kind of relation an arrow represents may not only vary with context but also be underdetermined by empirical data. In this manuscript, we investigate how an analysis of pharmacological mechanisms in terms of producing and underlying mechanisms—as discussed in the contemporary philosophy of science—may shed light on these issues. Specifically, we shall argue that while pharmacokinetic mechanisms usually describe causal chains of production, pharmacodynamics tends to focus on mechanisms of action underlying the in vivo effects of a drug. Considering the action of thyroid gland hormones in the human body as a case study, we further demonstrate that pharmacodynamic schemes tend to incorporate entities and interactions on multiple levels. Yet, traditional pharmacodynamic schemes are sketched “flat”, i.e., non-hierarchically. We suggest that transforming flat pharmacodynamic schemes into mechanistic multi-level representations may assist in disentangling the different kinds of mechanisms and relations depicted by arrows in flat schemes. The resulting Baumkuchen model provides a powerful and practical alternative to traditional flat schemes, as it explicates the relevant mechanisms and relations more clearly. On a more general note, our discussion demonstrates how pharmacology and related disciplines may benefit from applying concepts from the new mechanist philosophy to guide the interpretation of scientific diagrams.

Author(s):  
Matthew Croasmun

Emergence theory in philosophy of science is introduced, first in modest terms of the emergent properties exhibited by complex wholes that are not exhibited by their constituent parts. Then, emergence is treated as a trans-ordinal theory that stakes out a middle ground between reductionism and dualism. The tension between supervenience and downward causation is described as the generative dialectic of emergence. The coherence of downward causation is debated and ultimately affirmed on account of the prevalence of downward causation in the sorts of accounts produced by fields like systems biology. Racism is treated as a case study of the sorts of causal feedback loops generated by complex causal structures that operate at multiple levels of hierarchy.


2016 ◽  
Vol 77 ◽  
pp. 54-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louis Anthony (Tony) Cox ◽  
Douglas A. Popken ◽  
A. Michael Kaplan ◽  
Laura M. Plunkett ◽  
Richard A. Becker

2015 ◽  
Vol 10 (9) ◽  
pp. 1934578X1501000
Author(s):  
Tomohiro Itoh ◽  
Yasuyoshi Miyake ◽  
Takuya Kasashima ◽  
Yoshie Shimomiya ◽  
Yuki Nakamura ◽  
...  

OM-X® is a hand-made and naturally manufactured probiotic supplement. This fermented food product is made from vegetables, fruits, seaweeds and mushrooms, using 12 strains of lactic acid bacteria and bifidobacteria. OM-X® is also known to have beneficial health properties, and some of its components show effects on antigen (Ag)-stimulated degranulation activity, indicating that OM-X® may be useful in the treatment of allergy responses and symptoms. In this study, we evaluated the inhibitory effects of OM-X® on Ag-stimulated degranulation in rat basophilic leukemia RBL-2H3 cells, clarified the underlying mechanisms, and determined the active compounds in OM-X® for suppression of degranulation. Treatment with OM-X® gradually suppressed Ag-stimulated degranulation throughout the maturation period. OM-X® also gradually produced melanoidins by lactic acid bacterial fermentation during the maturation process. There was a high correlation between the suppression levels of Ag-stimulated degranulation and the browning of OM-X®. Furthermore, the inhibition of Ag-stimulated degranulation by OM-X® was found to be partially due to the direct inactivation of NADPH oxidase. To elucidate the in vivo effects of OM-X®, type I allergy model mice were orally administered with OM-X®, and the passive cutaneous anaphylaxis (PCA) reaction was measured. OM-X® intake remarkably suppressed the PCA reaction. Taken together, our findings suggest that OM-X® could be a beneficial food to ameliorate allergic reactions.


Pneumologie ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 68 (06) ◽  
Author(s):  
E Lopez-Rodriguez ◽  
C Boden ◽  
S Knippenberg ◽  
A Pascual ◽  
J Perez-Gil ◽  
...  

1999 ◽  
Vol 12 (04) ◽  
pp. 173-177 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. L. Aper ◽  
M. D. Brown ◽  
M. G. Conzemius

SummaryTreatment of canine hip dysplasia (CHD) via triple pelvic osteotomy (TPO) is widely accepted as the treatment that best preserves the existing hip joint. TPO, however, has several important disadvantages. In an effort to avoid some of the difficulties associated with TPO an alternative method of creating acetabular ventroversion (AW) was sought. The purpose of this study was to explore the effects of placement of a wedge in the sacroiliac (SI) joint on A W and to compare this to the effect of TPO on A W . On one hemipelvis a 30° pelvic osteotomy plate was used for TPO. The contralateral hemipelvis had a 28° SI wedge inserted into the SI joint. Pre- and postsurgical radiographs of each pelvis were taken and the angular measurements were recorded. On average, the 28° SI wedge resulted in 20.9° of A W, the 30° canine pelvic osteotomy plate resulted in 24.9° A W . Significant differences were not found (p >0.05) between the two techniques. Sacroiliac wedge rotation effectively creates A W and has several theoretical advantages when compared to TPO. The in vivo effects of sacroiliac wedge rotation should be studied in order to evaluate the clinical effect of the technique.Sacroiliac wedge rotation was tested as an alternative method to increase the angle of acetabular ventroversion. This technique effectively rotated the acetabulum and has several theoretical advantages when compared to triple pelvic osteotomy.


Author(s):  
Ronald Hoinski ◽  
Ronald Polansky

David Hoinski and Ronald Polansky’s “The Modern Aristotle: Michael Polanyi’s Search for Truth against Nihilism” shows how the general tendencies of contemporary philosophy of science disclose a return to the Aristotelian emphasis on both the formation of dispositions to know and the role of the mind in theoretical science. Focusing on a comparison of Michael Polanyi and Aristotle, Hoinski and Polansky investigate to what degree Aristotelian thought retains its purchase on reality in the face of the changes wrought by modern science. Polanyi’s approach relies on several Aristotelian assumptions, including the naturalness of the human desire to know, the institutional and personal basis for the accumulation of knowledge, and the endorsement of realism against objectivism. Hoinski and Polansky emphasize the promise of Polanyi’s neo-Aristotelian framework, which argues that science is won through reflection on reality.


Diabetes ◽  
1980 ◽  
Vol 29 (9) ◽  
pp. 702-709 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. P. Diamond ◽  
R. C. Rollings ◽  
L. Erlendson ◽  
P. E. Williams ◽  
W. W. Lacy ◽  
...  

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