Questions tagged [drugs]
Drugs or pharmaceuticals are substances or combinations used to diagnose, cure, treat, or prevent disease.
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What are known examples of drugs that racemize/stereoconvert in vivo, and how are they converted?
It is known that although only the (S)-enantiomer of the infamous sedative thalidomide possesses teratogenic properties, it is not very useful to administer the pure (R)-enantiomer since it is ...
user95
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What does it mean for meth or any other compound to be 'pure'?
In Breaking Bad, Walter White can cook $99.1\%$ pure meth. In general what does it mean for a substance to be pure? In this case, what exactly does it mean for meth to be pure? Does higher purity mean ...
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Effect of enatiomers in pharmaceuticals [closed]
Often (or always?) one enantiomer of a certain drug will be effective and the other ineffective or harmful. The famous example is thalidomide, where one enantiomer caused mutilation of the unborn ...
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IUPAC naming of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) heterocyclic core and its locants
Wikipedia article about LSD says its IUPAC name is
(6aR,9R)-N,N-diethyl-7-methyl-4,6,6a,7,8,9-hexahydroindolo[4,3-fg]quinoline-9-carboxamide
which is quite complex. Especially its didehydroergoline ...
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Why is heroin a more potent drug than morphine, despite having a similar structure?
The structures of heroin and morphine are quite similar, with heroin being formed by acetylation of morphine:
Why is heroin so much more potent than morphine, when their structures are so similar? ...
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Why formulate drugs as HCl salts when HCl is in stomach acid?
I know there are issues of formulation and industrial processing that make it advantageous to produce many amine containing drugs as their salts rather than as freebases. And if giving the drug ...
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Difference between Sildenafil and Sildenafil citrate
The data I found seems to show no difference between Sildenafil and Sildenafil citrate. But if they are the same things, why Pfizer use Sildenafil citrate instead of Sildenafil as their product Viagra?...
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Why do most drugs (eg: oxycodone) have seemingly arbitrary names?
How do some medicines derive their names?
For instance, is the name oxycodone somewhat arbitrary? I am not well-versed in Chemistry (1st semester student) but does the prefix oxy- imply some ...
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What is the difference between doxycycline HCl and doxycycline hyclate?
I would like to ask what are the main differences between doxycycline HCl and hyclate?
I work in the pharmaceutical/veterinary raw materials industry and some clients are saying that they prefer ...
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Why are drugs mixed with their sodium salts?
I have come across quite a few drugs that are of the form $\ce{HA + NaA}$, where $\ce{A}$ is your target organic compound. A few examples of this are:
Carmicide which is a mixture of Sodium Citrate ...
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What is the origin of the naming of deoxycorticosterone acetate?
Deoxy- means the compound misses an oxygen comparing to the name without the prefix.
Acetate means ethanoate in IUPAC language. Many biologists still abide old rules and call it acetate. And finally, ...
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Why do pharmaceutical drugs have a expiration date?
Every now and then you reach into the bathroom cabinet to find that some pill or ointment you where planning to use has gone past its expiration date.
I am interested whether this expiration date has ...
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Why does almost every drug that causes dependence have this "-ine" suffix?
I noticed that many drugs that cause dependence have the suffix word "-ine". For example:
Caffeine, nicotine, benzodiazepine, methamphetamine, cocaine, and morphine.
My questions:
Why do ...
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Acidity of metronidazole
Metronidazole has two $\mathrm{p}K_\mathrm{a}$ values: $2.57$ and $15.42.$ The basic group is the imidazole moiety. Does metronidazole have acidic groups?
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Is there any difference between Meprobamate and Equanil?
My textbook mentions Meprobamate and Equanil separately, under Anxiolytic drugs and even provides two (not-so) different structures to back their claim.
However, Wikipedia would beg to differ:
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