Course Gaps at Bauchi State University

Introduction: Medicines and discovery processes. Initial stages: Target discovery; applications of molecular biology, in silico methods and assays; lead discovery; lead optimization; biomarkers. Measurement of drug properties: assay techniques; agonists (full, partial, inverse and biased); competitive antagonists. In vivo models; pharmacokinetic profiles of compounds; pharmacogenetics and formulations. Pre-clinical safety assessment including acute toxicity evaluation, subacute and chronic toxicity studies, reproductive toxicity, carcinogenicity studies, mutagenicity and mechanistic toxicity studies. Limitations of preclinical studies. Problems associated with drug discovery and development. Later stages: Pharmaceutical development; phases of clinical evaluation; ethics (informed consent, good clinical practice, participation criteria, sponsorship) and concepts in clinical trial design. Pharmacovigilance. e-Learning Activity Links are provided to additional resources (further reading, videos, on-line activities) to support the lecture content. Online self-assessment modules on the course content can be provided for formative feedback. Practical: Experiments are designed to reflect the topics covered including spectrophotometry, chromatography, flow cytometry.

Macro and micro economic factors that influence health, illness and health care delivery system. Concept of health economics. Factors that affect demand and supply of health care services. Macroeconomic indices that influence the economy and health. The costing of health and nursing services. Availability and distribution. Cost recovery of services. Healthcare financing and the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS). Role of nurses in the National Health Insurance Scheme.

Introduction to sociology, psychology and anthropology. Biological basis for human behaviour– sensation, perception. Motivation and emotion. Describe human development, learning and practices. Role of culture, communication and human relationship and public participation. Importance of indigenous knowledge, belief and health practices. Social, psychological and biological aspect of environmental planning and built-up environment, substance use and abuse. Inequalities in health, psychological disorders, stresses, illness behaviours in relation to social medicine and medical psychology. Role of human behaviours in illness and disease causation. Social determinants of health, social epidemiology and health service utilisation behaviours. Application of social science theories towards understanding behavioural aspects of health and medical care. Considerations of human behavioural dimensions in illness and disease, prophylactic behaviour, the role of culture, role of social institutions, stress and health, compliance behaviours, social epidemiology and many others. Also covers topics in social health including smoking, alcoholism, drug addiction, obesity and nutritional behaviour/disorders, health services utilisation behaviour, emotional health and personality disorders, religion and health.

This course reviews social determinants of health. How education status, social status and economic status affects health. Sociological perspective of health. The functionalist approach, the conflict approach, and the interactionist approach. The social issues in health with reference to the services offered such as social welfare services, care of the motherless babies, care, and rehabilitation of the handicapped, care of the elderly and the care of destitute/beggars are discussed. Inequality and social class in relation to health. Ethnicity. gender and health. Health equity and social stigmatisation are taught.

Introduction to immune system: Definitions, types (adaptive and innate), B and T lymphocytes, chemical mediators (cytokines, interleukenes, antibodies, and many others). Abnormal immune responses: Hypersensitivity (Type I, II, III, IV), Autoimmunity, immunodeficiency diseases. Immunosuppressive drugs: Glucocorticoids, Calcineurin inhibitors, Anti-proliferatives (mycophenolate e.t.c), cytotoxic agents, Antibodies, RhO (D) immune globulin, Monoclonal antibodies, (rituximab and many others). Cytokines: Interferones, TNF – alpha, and many others. Drug allergy, Tumor markers for solid tumors. Antigraft rejection drugs. Steroidal and non- steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. Used in the treatment of gout. Practical: Designed to reflect experimental models of the topics taught above.

This is an introductory course on Artificial Intelligence. The topics include; Overview: foundations, scope, problems, and approaches of AI. Intelligent agents: reactive, deliberative, goal-driven, utility-driven, and learning agents; Artificial Intelligence programming techniques. Problem-solving through Search: forward and backward, state-space, blind, heuristic, problem-reduction, A, A*, AO*, minimax, constraint propagation, neural, stochastic, and evolutionary search algorithms, sample applications. Knowledge Representation and Reasoning: ontologies, foundations of knowledge representation and reasoning, representing and reasoning about objects, relations, events, actions, time, and space; predicate logic, situation calculus, Content logics, reasoning with defaults, reasoning about knowledge, sample applications. Planning: planning as search, partial order planning, construction and use of planning graphs. Representing and Reasoning with Uncertain Knowledge: probability, connection to logic, independence, Bayes rule, bayesian networks, probabilistic inference, sample applications. Decision-Making: basics of utility theory, decision theory, sequential decision problems, elementary game theory, sample applications. Machine Learning and Knowledge Acquisition: learning from memorisation, examples, explanation, and exploration. learning nearest neighbor, naive Bayes, and decision tree classifiers, Q-learning for learning action policies, applications. Sample Applications of AI, student project presentations.

Pattern of transmission of single gene trait. Hardy-Weinberg Law Conditions for its Validity, application. On concepts of continuous and discontinuous variation. Pharmacogenetics (drug metabolism, tissue metabolism and receptor alterations). Compartment models (one and two) kinetics after intravenous and oral dosing. Bioavailability, Drug distribution, Protein binding. Renal excretion of drugs. Urinary excretion data in Pharmacokinetic analysis.

Introduction: Drug – receptor interaction; affinity and [intrinsic activity; occupancy theory; Rate Theory; Drug receptor interactions; law of mass action, enzyme-substrate interaction. dose- response relationship – Graphical and Derivation of receptor affinity PD2; Competitive Antagonism. The Gaddum-Schild Equation for Affinity constant of competitive antagonists; Non-competitive antagonism, Partial agonist; Competitive non-competitive antagonism. Pharmacodynamic prediction from pharmacokinetic data (one compartment model). Receptor desensitisation, Mechanisms of Post-receptor transduction. Introduction to Biostatistics, Normal distribution, Mean probit transformation, standard Deviation and standard Error. T-tests paired and unpaired, chi- square Test, Analysis of variance, Poisson Distribution. Physiology and Pharmacology courses are the minor and major courses in a BSc Pharmacology programme worldwide. Students must therefore be well grounded in them upon graduation to be able to pursue a successful career. Physiology provides the theoretical basis of normal body function while pharmacology explains how drugs and chemicals exert correction in situations of altered physiology. These two courses transverse all organs/systems of the human body and span 200 to 400 Levels of the BSc Pharmacology programme.