Desensitization (medicine)

In medicine, desensitization is a method to reduce or eliminate an organism's negative reaction to a substance or stimulus.

In pharmacology, drug desensitization refers to two related concepts. First, desensitization may be equivalent to drug tolerance and refers to subjects' reactions (positive or negative) to a drug reducing following its repeated use. This is a macroscopic, organism-level effect and differs from the second meaning of desensitization, which refers to a biochemical effect where individual receptors become less responsive after repeated application of an agonist. This may be mediated by phosphorylation, for instance by beta adrenoceptor kinase at the beta adrenoceptor.