Medicines Hormone replacement therapy

Tone, Andrea, and Elizabeth Watkins, eds. Medicating Modem America Prescription Drugs in History. New York NYU Press, 2007. This history of medicine in America covers eight of the most influential and important drugs antibiotics, mood stabilizers, hormone replacement therapy, oral contraceptives, tranquilizers, stimulants, statins, and Viagra. Each chapter describes how the drugs become such an essential part of medical care and change the way Americans think about disease. 

Kaweski S Plastic Surgery Educational Foundation DATA Committee. Anti-aging medicine. Part I. Hormone replacement therapy in women. Plast Reconstr Surg 2003 111 935-8. 

Shader RI, Greenblatt DJ. More on oral conttaceptives, drug interactions, herbal medicines, and hormone replacement therapy. J Clin Psychopharmacol (2000) 20, 397-8. 

The book deals with the minor illnesses or conditions that can be self-treated with advice and treatment from a pharmacist. Three chapters deal with medicines (Chapter 24, nicotine replacement therapy Chapter 32, emergency hormonal contraception and Chapter 2, simvastatin) that have become available without prescription within the last few years and are not treatments for illnesses but are used prophylactically or preventively. 

Slowing the release of the parent steroid is a great benefit in steroid medicine, as free testosterone (or other steroid hormones) previously would remain active in the body for a very short period of time (typically hours). This would necessitate an unpleasant daily injection schedule if one wished to maintain a continuous elevation of testosterone (the goal of testosterone replacement therapy). By adding an ester, the patient can visit the doctor as infrequently as once per month for his injection, instead of having to constantly re-administer the drug to achieve a therapeutic effect. Clearly without the use of an ester, therapy with an injectable anabolic/androgen would be much more difficult. 

In many cases the most important aspect of structural studies is that knowledge of the structure of a protein leads to improved understanding of its function. For instance, if a protein has to be administered for lifetime or longterm replacement therapy (e.g., insulin, growth hormone, factor IX), it is important to know all about its structure-function-stability relationships. A longer turnover time or a higher specific activity, for example, allows for a smaller dose to be administered, which has medicinal and financial benefits. 

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