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A property of drugs that bind to receptors that reflects the attractiveness of the drug to the receptor, or the likelihood that the drug will bind to the receptor when it is in close proximity. Both receptor agonists and antagonists have affinity for receptors. It is equal to the ratio of the concentration of the bound complex to the product of the reactant concentrations at equilibrium, [LR]/([L], and is usually described in terms of its reciprocal, the equilibrium dissociation constant.
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© 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Slifstein, M. (2010). Affinity. In: Stolerman, I.P. (eds) Encyclopedia of Psychopharmacology. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-68706-1_791
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-68706-1_791
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-68698-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-68706-1
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