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A substance that binds to a receptor and alters the receptor state, resulting in a biological response. The response mimics the effect of the endogenous activator of the receptor. A compound can be a full agonist, which leads to the maximum possible response of the system under study, or a partial agonist, an agonist that under specified conditions does not elicit as large an effect as a full agonist. This is in contrast to antagonists that have affinity but no efficacy at a receptor, and hence have no observable effects except to modify the actions of an agonist at that receptor. Inverse agonists are compounds that produce a pharmacological response that is opposite in direction to that of an agonist.
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© 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Atack, J., Lavreysen, H. (2010). Agonist. In: Stolerman, I.P. (eds) Encyclopedia of Psychopharmacology. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-68706-1_1565
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-68706-1_1565
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-68698-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-68706-1
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