Spotlight:

Potency: A Video Discussion

Potency Matters

Potency in pharmacology refers to the concentration or dose of a drug required to produce a given effect. In simpler terms, it’s a measure of how strong a drug is.

Key Points:

  • Potency a measure of the strength of a drug or chemical. It is expressed as the dose, or concentration, required to produce a given level of effect.

  • Potency is useful for comparing the strength of different drugs and chemicals, but is often poorly understood and miscommunicated in discussions of endocrine disruptors.

  • Understanding how potency works is critical for understanding which chemicals can, and which chemicals cannot, disrupt the endocrine system.

Watch the video for a more detail discussion.

    Potency a measure of the strength of a drug or chemical. It is expressed as the dose, or concentration, required to produce a given level of effect, and is useful for comparing the strength of different drugs and chemicals.

    Hormones are natural chemicals produced in the body, that control physiology.  They exert their effects by interacting strongly (high potency) with the molecular machinery of the endocrine system, e.g., with hormone receptors, hormone transporter proteins, the binding sites on DNA that control gene expression, etc.

    Endocrine Disruptors are chemicals that adversely affect physiology through an endocrine mechanism, i.e., by mimicking or interfering with the actions of hormones at hormone receptors, hormone transporter proteins, DNA binding sites, or with the enzymes that synthesize or inactivate hormones. 

    Thus, in the context of endocrine disruption, potency refers to the strength by which a drug or chemical interacts with the molecular machinery of the endocrine system.

    For a chemical to be an endocrine disruptor, it must interact with the molecular machinery of the endocrine system with sufficient potency to compete with or interfere with a hormone.

    Because chemicals that have a low potency of interaction with the molecular machinery of the endocrine system cannot compete with hormones for access to that molecular machinery, they cannot produce effects through an endocrine mechanism, and are not endocrine disruptors.