Pharmacology is one of the core subjects of graduation in
Pharmacy (B.Pharma). If you are studying pharmacy and aspiring to crack GPAT
for pursuing higher education in pharmacy then GPAT is the essential nut for
you to crack. GPAT is conducted every year in the first week of May by MS
University, Baroda for AICTE. Those who successfully qualify this exam get a
stipend of 8000 per month for pursuing M.Pharma from a recognized institute. In
GPAT, there are fair amount of questions which are asked from the Pharmacology
and if one study this subject thoroughly then he can easily crack the GPAT with
flying colors. In this article, I have explained the main important topics from
where you will definitely get questions every year.
So now coming to the core of the topic, let’s have a look on
the important topics of pharmacology with respect to the GPAT. By analyzing the
question paper of previous years, I have figured out the following topics which
are touched by the examiner every time. Here is the discussion of each topic
one by one.
Receptors and drug actions
Receptors and drug action is one of the most important topic
which must be covered by a GPAT aspirant. Most of the students neglect this
topic while preparing for GPAT but if you see the question of previous years,
you will definitely find questions regarding the receptors in the exam.
Most of the questions asked in the GPAT are primarily focused
on the types of receptors through which a drug exhibits its mechanism and
pharmacological action. After studying this topic you must be able to answer
different types of receptors, their mechanism of action and major classes of
drugs acting through a particular receptor.
Chemotherapy of anticancer drugs
This is also an important topic of pharmacology keeping in
mind the preparation of the GPAT. Most of the students while studying
chemotherapy focus only on the established classes of chemotherapeutic agents
for cancer but neglect the newer anticancer agents. This can cost them a
question or two in the GPAT as most of the times questions are asked from the
newer anticancer agents.
Along with the new anti cancer agents, one should not forget
to study the classification and mechanism of action of every class of
anticancer agents.
Pharmacology of antiviral drugs
Antiviral drugs also have a crucial place in the preparation
of the GPAT. While studying antiviral drugs for GPAT, you must study the
classification of the antiviral drugs, their mechanism of action and adverse
actions of the selected drugs.
Here, special emphasis should be given while studying the
antiviral treatment of HIV infection as this is the most hit topic in the GPAT
question paper. Along with this, due focus should also be given to the structure
of the virus.
Drug metabolism and excretion
From my analysis of previous year’s question paper of the
GPAT I have made a conclusion that your preparation is incomplete if you will
not study Drug metabolism in detail. In this topic, one should pay attention on
the structure of the cytochrome-p450, general metabolism of pathway of the
important classes of drugs and drug interactions due to the altered metabolism
of a drug by the other class of the drug.
Along with the above portion one should also focus on the
numerical portion of drug metabolism and excretion. There are fair amount of numerical
on this topic in the paper. One can argue that numerical on this topic comes in
Biopharmaceutics but to get best result I highly recommend studying the theory
and numerical portion of this topic simultaneously to have better understanding
of the topic.
Pharmacology of the antiepileptic drugs
Epilepsy is an indispensable topic if you preparing for
GPAT. Most of the questions asked in this portion are from the mechanism of
actions of different classes of drugs used to treat epilepsy. But, along with
this topic one should also study the classification of the antiepileptic drugs
and the different types of epilepsy with their clinical manifestations.
Adverse drug action of these drugs and their interaction s
with other drugs also have due weightage in the GPAT exam.
Other important topics of Pharmacology for GPAT
Along with above topics, other topics which are also
important for GPAT preparation include Antipsychotic drugs,
Anti-hyperlipidemic drugs, cardiac glycosides, general pharmacology and anti-ulcer drugs.
These topics also have due weightage in the GPAT exam. If a
GPAT aspirant can study the above topics in detail then he can easily answers
15-20 questions correctly which is nearly equal to the 50% of the marks
required to qualify the GPAT exam.
Books to study Pharmacology for GPAT
The one and clear winner for this is KD Tripathy’s Essential
of Pharmacology. This book is written with almost 100% accuracy and the most
important thing is that most of the questions are set from this book only. This
book has been written in an easy language and in descriptive manner so you can
follow it without any hindrance.
Along with KD Tripathy’s Essential of Pharmacology, one can
also study Goodman & Gilman’s The pharmacological basis of therapeutics if
someone wants to have the deep knowledge of the subject.
The author of this post is pursuing Ph.D in Pharmaceutical
Chemistry from a recognized NAAC A graded government University. He has
qualified GPAT two times with 94 and 97 percentile respectively. He is running
this blog to help those who wish to crack GPAT but can’t afford coaching due to
any reason.
If you have any query or doubt you can ask by making a
comment below or by mail at gpatcrackers@gmail.com
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