Adjuvant

In medicine, adjuvants are agents which modify the effect of other agents while having few if any direct effects when given by themselves. In this sense, they are very roughly analogous with chemical catalysts.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

In pharmacology, adjuvants are drugs that have few or no pharmacological effects by themselves, but may increase the efficacy or potency of other drugs when given at the same time.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

For instance, caffeine has minimal analgesic effect on its own, but may have an adjuvant effect when given with paracetamol.

Medicine: Medicine is a branch of health science concerned with maintaining human health and restoring it by treating disease and injury; it is both an area of knowledge, a science of body systems and diseases and their treatment, and the applied practice of that knowledge....

Catalyst: A catalyst (Greek: καταλύτης, catalyt?s) is a substance that accelerates the rate (speed) of a chemical reaction without itself being transformed or consumed by the reaction (see also catalysis). Chemical catalysts, the focus of this article, participate ...

Pharmacology: Pharmacology (in Greek: pharmacon (φάρμακον) is drug, and logos (λόγος) is science) is the study of how chemical substances interact with living systems. If these substances have medicinal properties, they are referred to as pharmaceut...