Pharmacological subtraction

Wang X, Feuerstein GZ. Suppression subtractive hybridisation application in the discovery of novel pharmacological targets. Pharmacogenomics 2000 1[1] 101—108. 

In clinical trials on cough medicines, it is the pharmacological effect of the medicine that is under investigation, and any other effects of the treatment are controlled by comparison with the effects of a placebo medication that is identical in appearance, colour taste, etc. with the active medication but does not contain the pharmacologically active ingredient. The pharmacological effect of a medicine is measured by subtracting the effects of the placebo control from those of the active medicine as illustrated in Fig. 3. 

Stimulation and just before stimulation began. The background-subtracted voltam-mograms obtained in vivo compare very well with those obtained during caKbra-tion of the microeiectrode in authentic dopamine after removal of the electrode from the animal. Anatomical evidence is also available both the stimulation and the voltammetric microeiectrode must be correctly positioned or no stimulus response will be obtained [46]. Finally, pharmacological evidence exists the effects of many drugs that interact selectively with dopamine neurons have been shown to exert predictable effects on the amplitude and duration of the stimulus responses [45, 48, 49],... 

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