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Pharmacology MCQ practice

Endocrine and Metabolic Pharmacology Quiz

Review diabetes, insulin, glucose-lowering medicines, thyroid pharmacology, metabolic safety, and counselling points.

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Sample Questions

Patient counselling

A patient with type 1 diabetes is vomiting and cannot eat. Which insulin advice is safest?

  • Stop all insulin until eating
  • Double rapid insulin without checks
  • Drink only water until well
  • Continue basal insulin and seek sick-day advice

Answer: Continue basal insulin and seek sick-day advice

Basal insulin usually continues during illness to prevent ketosis.

Stopping insulin or changing doses without monitoring can cause ketoacidosis or hypoglycaemia.

Drug interactions

A patient takes levothyroxine with iron tablets each morning. What advice improves absorption?

  • Crush both tablets together
  • Take levothyroxine after antacid
  • Separate levothyroxine from iron by several hours
  • Take iron together with levothyroxine

Answer: Separate levothyroxine from iron by several hours

Iron can reduce levothyroxine absorption.

Taking it with iron or antacids can reduce absorption; crushing does not solve the interaction.

Thyroid

How long must a patient wait between taking iodide to control thyroid storm and use of radioactive iodine?

  • Several months
  • Several weeks
  • Several hours
  • Several days

Answer: Several weeks

Patients wait several weeks because recent iodide reduces thyroid uptake of radioactive iodine.

Hours or days are too short for iodine load effects to resolve; several months is usually longer than needed.

Thyroid

A patient should wait 4 hours between taking levothyroxine and consuming?

  • Bread meal
  • Iron supplements
  • Fruit juice
  • Rice meal

Answer: Iron supplements

Iron supplements reduce levothyroxine absorption, so they should be separated by about four hours.

Fruit juice, rice, and bread may affect timing advice less specifically than iron chelation.

Thyroid

Which antithyroid drug mainly blocks thyroid hormone synthesis rather than T4-to-T3 conversion?

  • Propranolol
  • Propylthiouracil
  • Hydrocortisone
  • Carbimazole

Answer: Carbimazole

Carbimazole is the exception because it mainly inhibits thyroid hormone synthesis, not peripheral T4 to T3 conversion.

Propranolol, propylthiouracil, and hydrocortisone can reduce peripheral T4 to T3 conversion.

Thyroid

Which drug can be used to directly reduce cardiovascular risk of thyroid storm?

  • Inorganic iodine
  • Propranolol
  • Dexamethasone
  • Carbimazole

Answer: Propranolol

Propranolol directly reduces tachycardia and adrenergic cardiovascular stress in thyroid storm.

Dexamethasone, carbimazole, and iodine treat hormone physiology but do not provide the same immediate beta blockade.

Learning Design

Drugzzle uses brief single-best-answer rounds, immediate feedback, confidence reflection, and missed-question review to support retrieval practice and safer prescribing reasoning.