Dictionary

The Ceiling Effect is a phenomenon in pharmacology and medicine where the maximum therapeutic effect of a drug is reached at a specific dose, and increasing the dose does not result in further improvement. In other words, the drug reaches a point of diminishing returns, where increasing the dose does not provide a proportional increase in effectiveness due to factors such as saturation of receptors in the body, limitations in the drug’s pharmacokinetics, or the emergence of side effects that offset the benefits of increasing the dose.

The ceiling effect is essential to consider when selecting and dosing medications, as it may indicate that increasing the dose beyond a certain point is unlikely to provide additional benefits and may increase the risk of adverse effects. The ceiling effect may also vary between individuals, and different medications may have different ceiling effects based on their mechanism of action and pharmacokinetics.