Man-made drugs

Thus the requirement for the use of man-made drugs and dietary additives as veterinary medicines for the treatment of farmed animals is considerable and worth about 100 million pounds sterling annually in the UK ( 104 million in 1994j io jjjg investment in dietary additives such as vitamins, trace minerals, coccidiostats, pigmenters, enzymes and other probiotics to feed compounders in the UK is worth about 110 million, assuming an addition rate of 2.5 kg per tonne and a cost of approximately 3% of the total concentrate dietary cost (calculated from MAFF data, 1995). ° These data can be increased by a factor of about 10 when the compound feed produced within Europe is considered. 

Protease inhibitors, which are the most potent antiretroviral agents currently available, were the end result of coordinated chemical design and structure-based computational analysis of the protease enzyme. With identification of the protease crystalline structure and identification of active binding sites, scientists were able to create compounds that would fit the protease enzyme with strong affinity and cause an inhibition of protease function. The clinical impact of these man-made drugs is... 

The definition of a drug differs between dictionaries and among the various professional specialisms. A search of the internet elicited various definitions and a paraphrase of the most memorable is a compound can be defined as a drug if, when injected into a rodent, it yields a scientific publication . Although this is a memorable definition, for the purposes of this review, however, a drug is defined broadly as a compound that has properties that influence the health of an animal when ingested or administered to that animal. A brief look at current literature will quickly convince the reader that this is a definition which covers man-made and natural compounds that can be extracted from plant material and microbes and iised. ... 

Morphine, when extracted from raw opium and treated chemically, yields the semisynthetic narcotics hydromorphone, oxymorphone, oxycodone, and heroin. Heroin is an illegal narcotic in the United States and is not used in medicine. Synthetic narcotics are those man-made analgesics with properties and actions similar to the natural opioids. Examples of synthetic narcotic analgesics are methadone, levorphanol, remifen-tanil, and meperidine Additional narcotics are listed in the Summary Drug Table Narcotic Analgesics. 

Axokine is another new drug under development. Axokine is a synthetic (man-made) chemical that mimics a hormone produced in the brain that is responsible for protecting the body from injury. Axokine was initially developed as a treatment for Lou Gehrig s disease, but researchers noticed that... 

Drug (IND) must be filed with the FDA (Figure 5-1). The IND includes (1) information on the composition and source of the drug, (2) chemical and manufacturing information, (3) all data from animal studies, (4) proposed clinical plans and protocols, (5) the names and credentials of physicians who will conduct the clinical trials, and (6) a compilation of the key data relevant to study the drug in man made available to investigators and their institutional review boards. 

S.H. Moolgavkar, E.G. Luebeck, J. Turim, and R.C. Brown, Lung cancer risk associated with exposure to man-made fibers. Drug Chem. Toxicol. 23 223-242, 2000. 

One of the early pain-relieving drugs, aspirin, was introduced in 1899 by Felix Hoffman, working for the German pharmaceutical firm Bayer. In 1898 Bayer also introduced heroin as a pain killer. Aspirin2-4 is a man-made synthetic chemical compound, acetylsalicylic acid. It is made from salicylic acid. The ancient Greeks and native South Americans, among others, found that the bark of the willow tree eased fever and pain. We now know that this is because the bark contains salicylic acid. Salicylic acid is bitter and irritates the stomach (see also Chapter 1). 

All of us are exposed to chemicals daily in our food, both natural constituents and contaminants. Some of the contaminants derive from cooking, while others are naturally occurring substances, such as those produced by fungi, and still others may be man-made environmental pollutants. All these chemicals may affect the disposition of other chemicals such as drugs. 

Although plants are by definition natural, they contain many chemical substances, some of which can be used as drugs but others may be very toxic. Unfortunately many of the general public think that, as they are natural, herbal remedies and herbal medicines must be safe. But just as with man-made synthetic drugs, herbal remedies can and do cause harm to patients taking them. 

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