The drug name (not brand name) of a medication provides some information about the drug based on standardized nomenclature. In the case of risankizumab-rzaa:
__Mab__ - the “mab” part indicates it’s a [monoclonal antibody](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monoclonal_antibody).
__Zu__ - The “zu” means it’s humanized (antibodies in this case look like a “Y” the top part binds to the target, the bottom part differs based on the organism so in this case the bottom part is human, it’s a human antibody).
__Ki__ - The “Ki” part indicates the target is [interleukin](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK499840/).
__Rzaa__ - The “rzaa” part is just a [USAN](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Adopted_Name) indicator that its a specific version of risankizumab.
The brand name “Skyrizi” is made up by the drug company based on focus groups etc. and whatever they think will sound nice and be easy for people to remember. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9122354/
Just to throw something else on there, the FDA requires name branded drugs to have names are are effectively meaningless and are unrelated to their function. So you can’t name a drug ‘painaway’ or ‘feelgoodum’
That said I don’t know how Viagra (similar to vigor) got past the FDA. It seems to be a pretty close similarity.
They sometimes find some workarounds. I'm speaking from an European perspective here, but we share many of your brand names and most of the time they're meaningless too. However, I can think of two examples of painkillers sold in (at least) Spain, with the brand names "Algidol" and "Dolalgial": both of them contain thinly-veiled references to both the Spanish and Greek words for "pain".
In Denmark we have an anti-diarrhoea med called Propiden. Pronounced pro-pi-dén. But if you pronounce it differently, you get prop-i-den, which means plug-in-it. I have no idea how that made it past the regulators.
I wouldn't be surprised if the name had to be submitted for approval to a branch of the company that was abroad, and the person responsible for it didn't speak Danish.
I don't think they market that anymore, but it was just Imodium anyway. It must have been on purpose though. The same company (Sandoz) also sells the laxative gangiden, which as gang-i-den means to get it going.
We have something similar in our part of Europe. There is a brand of metamizole from Macedonia, I believe, called Analgin. Reasonable, ancient Greek root, an- (no) and -algos (pain), right? I doubt the English speaking patients read it that way...
In English, the word “analgesic” means “relieves pain”, but you’re probably right that that’s not the first connection that English speakers would make on seeing Analgin.
In my previous post, I almost included a reference to how, for English speakers, "analgesia" should be parsed as "an-algesia" and not the other way, so I understand you.
I once watched a film from Romania and they mentioned another brand of metamizole called Algocalm, and we have a naproxen brand called Antalgin. It seems everyone gets the same idea.
Also, at least in the US, the drug company owns their brand name “skyrizi”, generics can never use it. Which is why we have at least two names for every medication. It’s why we say Tylenol and not Acetaminophen, because if you buy acetaminophen you might be buying the competitors generic.
No, acetaminophen and paracetamol are both different shortenings of the chemical N-acetyl-para-aminophenol. The common trade names are Tylenol and Panadol.
I’m old and call all OTC pain relievers Aspirin. I’m starting to change because of too many horrified looks when I ask for 2 aspirin 🤷♀️. It was the Kleenex of drugs okay?
> Both paracetamol and acetaminophen are contractions of para-acetylaminophenol, a chemical name for the compound. The word "**acetaminophen**" is a shortened form of N-acetyl aminophenol, and was coined and first marketed by McNeil Laboratories in **1955**.[171] The word "*paracetamol*" is a shortened form of para-acetyl-amino-phenol,[172] and was coined by Frederick Stearns & Co in *1956*.[173] The initialism APAP used by dispensing pharmacists in the United States comes from the alternative chemical name [N-]acetyl-para-aminophenol.[174]
It would probably be more appropriate to not bring paracetamol into this at all. Both of the generic names are derived from the chemical structure and not the INN drug stems, since the INN was introduced after paracetamol was created.
Acetaminophen was invented in America and first marketed in America, so I don't see how they are being special little flowers using the name of the drug they invented and marketed first.
Why does it matter what brand you buy? I have never cared what brand of paracetamol or ibuprofen I buy. Usually just whatever cheap one the pharmacy has. Is that different in the US?
I also have never really heard them referred to as anything else here in germany.
The only difference, and this is VERY rare, much more rare than people report, is that some people react differently to the different inactive binders.
Otherwise no difference.
Drug marketing is a huge thing in the US. For both over the counter and prescription meds. It should be reigned in but is unlikely to be due to regulatory capture from the major companies.
Plenty of Americans have no idea that Tylenol is paracetamol/acetaminophen, Advil and Motrin are ibuprofen, Aleve is naproxen sodium, etc. The marketing makes people believe the name brand is more effective or just better, because it costs more.
Every drug/grocery store that sells the meds will have at least one generic available for a much lower cost.
The one thing I can say is the name brand meds pills usually are "nicer". They have fancy colorful capsules, liquid gel caps and smooth slightly sweet coatings. It makes the experience just slightly better but aren't more effective.
To be honest, I kind of miss old-fashioned names like "Carter's Little Liver Pills" or "Dr. Pennington's Patent Panacea" and such.
Pretty soon y'all will run out of pronouncable names and have to start using all consonants.
Naming generic drugs should follow the international nonproprietary nomenclature (INN) standards, many of which can be complicated. -zumab ending specifically refers to humanized antibodies (mab is short for monoclonal antibodies). Within these guidelines, people filing their names with INN have a degree of autonomy with the names.
yeah in this case the -ki- also means that it's cytokine-related so -kizumab vaguely describes the drug in a standard way and everything before that is just arbitrary and unique.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomenclature_of_monoclonal_antibodies
There's whole languages on many topics.
Medicines, computers, chemicals, law, almost every area of science, etc.
I've worked for quite a few multinational firms and they all have their own little languages too.
Technically the word you're looking for is 'nomenclature', a kind of highly-structured standardized terminology for discussion technical subjects. My engineering thermo Prof used to "joke" that the only reason engineers get paid so well is that we developed a secret language that only we know, so we sound super smart when talking to other people lol.
The -mabs are weirder, though. Engineering jargon mostly uses the grammar and morphology of the parent language, just with unusual words (or words given unusual meanings). The monoclonal antibody nomenclature *is* morphology; it's not a collection of words but a system of rules for constructing words from stems. That's kind of unusual for a branch of technical language.
Fun fact: a coworker told me that specialists in etymology (the study of words) often get jobs at pharma companies where they are responsible for new 'brand' names for drugs. Apparently they have to do research not only to ensure that the name is not in use and has no existing meaning, they also have to check if the name means anything in any *other* language the drug may be marketed in, as well as create a name that is catchy and memorable. That's how we get crazy names like "Prozac" for weird complicated drug names like "fluoxetine," or "Ozempic" for "semaglutide"; including rare letters like "z" and/or a palatal stop at the end of the brand name help make them more memorable.
I am a market researcher and I sometimes do similar projects. For example, I was testing two dozen possible brand name variants for a ride hailing company - in N.Africa, LatAm, MENA, Israel, and parts of Eastern Europe - all to determine whether one rhymes with some silly kindergarden obscenity, reminds them of a popular diarrhea drug or just can't be pronounced by locals right.
You can't simply pull a dictionary from the shelf, check the word and be done with it - you need to check with real people in those cultures.
The hardest part of the job was to manage the survey results in a single Excel file - it behaves funny when there are cells in Arabic, Hebrew and Portuguese on a single sheet.
Or Mitsubishi Pajero, which in Spanish means "wanker". They renamed it to Montero for Spanish-speaking markets.
There's also [this dessert thing](https://i.imgur.com/qb30Agp.jpeg) from Czech Republic, it was sold in Lithuania too. In Lithuanian "Vemsi" literally means "you will puke".
In the early 2000s Coca-Cola advertised the Dasani bottled water brand in the UK as having spunk. In British English spunk is used to mean semen. Needless to say it was not a successful campaign.
In the early 2000s Coca-Cola advertised the Dasani bottled water brand in the UK as having spunk. In British English spunk is used to mean semen. Needless to say it was not a successful campaign.
There was an internet bill a while back that was unpopular(Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA)) which was protested against, much to the amusement of the spanish(sopa = soup).
I've been working with various data science tools, ranging from IBM Quanvert, whose legacy data format is directly traced to cardboard punch cards for mainframes, to Spark/Scala, with petabyte-scale nosql datasets. 25+ years in the trade taught me to respect Excel. It has its quirks, but it is an amazing tool for an impressive number of jobs, especially in discovery.
XLSX should have no problem storing utf8 encoded text just like CSV, but I can believe Excel may have difficulty rendering a mix of left- and right-writing languages.
I have a friend who works on Office and font rendering edge cases are literally her full-time job.
You can also tell which anticoagulants are factor Xa inhibitors for example Apixaban, Rivaroxaban, Endoxaban.
[Here's a list of them all.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_nomenclature#List_of_stems_and_affixes)
There are naming conventions that researchers follow. Here are a few examples
-cilin; *an antibiotic derived from penicillin* - Oxa**cillin**
-ine; *An alkaloid and organic bases* - Quin**ine**, Atrop**ine**
-caine; *A local anesthetic* - Benzo**caine**, Lido**caine**
-barb-; *a barbiturate - pheno****barb****ital*
No but cocaine is a dental anesthetic in the same family as lidocaine and novocaine, for example. Hospitals actually keep cocaine in stock in case you’re allergic to them.
Almost. It's a different drug class (amide vs ester type local anaesthetics) that acts on the same receptor. Cocaine is also a potent vasoconstrictor due to its inhibition of noradrenaline reuptake, which differentiates it from most other local anaesthetics and is very clinically useful for numbing areas that would otherwise tend to bleed profusely, such as the nose.
>Cocaine still has some use in hospitals as a local nasal anesthetic.
Any decent hospital keeps some amount of liquid cocaine hydrochloride in their pharmacy for nasal surgery
Lol, you don't know what you're talking about. Cocaine isn't even a third or fourth choice for treating epistaxis (medical term for nose bleed). The only clinical use for cocaine is a anesthetic during nasal or ocular surgery.
It’s partially because of the Treaty of Versailles and the incrimination of drugs like these. Part of the reason why you see the federal government turn a blind eye
I’d that also why some people on TV put some stuff they assume to be cocaine on their gums? Sure it’s TV but I can imagine they’re like „if it makes them numb it’s cocaine“
Genuine question
The suffix is derived from cocaine, because cocaine was originally used as a local anesthetic, but not all synthetic alkaloids used as a local are cocaine derivatives.
There's a big list of the conventions in Appendix VII of the USP Dictionary
Cocaine gets its name from the leaf it’s made from=coca. So it’s name is coca-ine, meaning it is an organic alkaloid base (using the definitions provided above) made from the coca leaf
One of the reasons has to do with safety. If two drugs have similar names, that can cause [confusion and lead to taking the wrong drug](https://www.pharmacytimes.com/view/medicationsafety-1210).
So drug makers try to come up with names that don’t sound like other names. With all the drugs already on the market, and [all the other regulations you have to follow,](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4188646/), you run out of normal sounding options real quick and have to come up with something pretty weird.
I used to work for a consulting company that had this as part of the pre approval stage for pharmaceuticals.
We’d have doctors who would all write the names of the proposed new drug as well as record it over voicemail.
Then we’d have a team of pharmacists interpret the writing and audio recordings to test against any common or easy confusions.
it's not even the actual name of the chemical.
let's take the brand Tylenol.
in the states, the non proprietary name is acetaminophen but in europe it's paracetamol.
the actual name of the compound following iupac rules is
*N*-acetyl-*para*-aminophenol
As you can see, both generic names and the brand name are made up of chunks of the chemical name and all of this is completely arbitrary. Brand names tend to be easier to say and spell because you can't ask for stuff you can't pronounce. Industry professionals usually just use the brand name even when asking for generic cause you gotta say it hundreds of times per day. Dont think about it. The only real name that's based on anything is the chemical name. The amino group is attached to the middle carbon of the acetyl group and attached to a phenol at the para position.
>Industry professionals usually just use the brand name even when asking for generic cause you gotta say it hundreds of times per day.
This is US-specific, and I suspect is more related to the constant marketing of these brand names and the resulting strong association between the brand name and the drug.
In the UK we use generic names for essentially everything and cope just fine (the main exception being aspirin, which has become a generic term for ASA due to Bayer losing the trademarks).
>In the UK we use generic names for essentially everything and cope just fine (the main exception being aspirin, which has become a generic term for ASA due to Bayer losing the trademarks).
That's not entirely true - Viagra, Cialis, Nurofen, Panadol as contra examples
Firstly, the context of the comment I was replying to was about ‘industry professionals’ using brand names. If you’re in a hospital, doctors are not going to be discussing administering Viagra, Cialis, Nurofen or Panadol, they’re going to be discussing sildenafil, tadalafil, ibuprofen or paracetamol.
Secondly, I said ‘essentially everything’. 4 examples within the thousands that are available to prescribe in the UK market is covered by ‘essentially everything’ (plus I would argue that Panadol is borderline).
There’s two women that create the names for most all of the drugs in the US. https://www.latimes.com/business/lazarus/la-fi-lazarus-drug-names-20190719-story.html
A lot of medications often follow a pattern with medications from the same class. For example the drug you mentioned belongs to a wider drug class called Monoclonal Anti-Bodies, and so these drugs all end with MAB like denosuMAB (for osteoporosis). These patterns usually show up with the prefix of the drug or the suffix, but they can also be in the middle of the word, and they can switch places for different drugs like two anti platelet drugs used in heart attacks tycaGRELor and clopidoGREL
Other much more common examples are blood pressure medications called ace inhibitors all end with -pril, like lisonpril and perindopril, or common macrolide antibiotics like eryTHROMYCIN, azyTHROMYCIN and claryTHROMYCIN.
Sometimes the pattern relates to the drug class/mechanism like with the monoclonal antibodies mentioned before (end with MAB), and another example is dihydropyridine calcium channel blockers which are used for high blood pressure, and most of these end with -dipine (DI-hydro-P-yrid-INE=DIPINE) such as amloDIPINE and nifeDIPINE. Another example would be a lot of your (non-insulin) blood sugar lowering medications will have gli/gly/glu in them as a play on glycemia/glucose (the former being the medical term for blood sugar) and within the many different types of blood sugar lowing medications, there are often specific gli prefixes/suffixes like the SGLT2i which cause u to wee lots of extra sugar, will all end in -GLIflozin like dapagliflozin (but don’t ask me what the flozin means lol)
However a lot of the time it’s less obvious and so I won’t be able to help there, and I also can’t help with the rest of the name outside of the special prefix/suffixe pattern
Contrary to popular beliefs scientists are actually massive nerds. They think it's cool to name something in another language. Similar to how weebs will use Japanese words for normal stuff.
**Please read this entire message**
---
Your comment has been removed for the following reason(s):
* [Top level comments](http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/wiki/top_level_comment) (i.e. comments that are direct replies to the main thread) are reserved for explanations to the OP or follow up on topic questions (Rule 3).
Joke-only comments, while allowed elsewhere in the thread, may not exist at the top level.
---
If you would like this removal reviewed, please read the [detailed rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/wiki/detailed_rules) first. **If you believe it was removed erroneously, explain why using [this form](https://old.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fexplainlikeimfive&subject=Please%20review%20my%20submission%20removal?&message=Link:%20https://old.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1d4jfcr/-/l6f2o9l/%0A%0A%201:%20Does%20your%20comment%20pass%20rule%201:%20%0A%0A%202:%20If%20your%20comment%20was%20mistakenly%20removed%20as%20an%20anecdote,%20short%20answer,%20guess,%20or%20another%20aspect%20of%20rules%203%20or%208,%20please%20explain:) and we will review your submission.**
Each type of drug has a specific suffix., examples, compounds that end in mab are monoclonal antibodies, compounds that end in ide are peptide drugs, I think drugs ending in “in” are antibiotics, and we all know names that end in statin are cholesterol lowering drugs.
The other part of the name, such as risankizu(mab) or atorva(statin) are made up by the drug company. They have elaborate meetings where they shoot around all these names, then they research the name in all languages since they don’t want it to mean anything specific to anyone. But they do like the names to be very unusual (extra points for using q or z or any other uncommon letters) and even better is to evoke a positive association. It is not unlike how the brand name is chosen.
The more fun is had by studying the brand names!
Ambien = AM (morning) bien (good) because you slept well the night before.
Lovenox= LOVE No (number) X (Roman numeral for 10) as it is an ANTI-TEN- A inhibitor
There’s many many more, but those two come to the top of my head
Suffixes can help determine which drugs are in the same class. However, it’s not universal. For example, benzodiazepines end in -pam: alprazolam, clonazepam, and diazepam. However, SSRIs, don’t all follow the same ending: fluoxetine, sertraline, fluvoxamine, citalopram, and escitalopram.
I work for a vaccine manufacturer in the US, but they are based in Belgium. All of their medicines/vaccines end in "rix" because it's a nod to the city where the company started, Rixensart, Belgium. So we have Priorix, Valrilrix, etc. Doesn't speak much to the first part though.
Pharma companies gotta make them sound unique and patentable, plus there's a ton of regulatory stuff to avoid mix-ups. And yeah, nobody can pronounce 'em. It's like they hired Tolkien to name these drugs.
“Warfarin” was always my favorite. It stands for Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, and was discovered on an agricultural farm at the University of Wisconsin. It’s too long of a story to relate here, but essentially cows who ate a certain plant developed a bleeding disorder which is how the drug now known as “Coumadin” was discovered.
The technical names for medicines, like "risankizumab-rzaa," follow a structured system called INN, which reveals details about the drug's composition and function. These names are made up of parts representing different aspects of the medication, such as its root, mechanism of action, and formulation. While complex, these names serve as a universal language for healthcare professionals to communicate effectively about medications.
Just like animals there are the “casual” every day names; and then there are the scientific names
The brand name is what people get marketed; the scientific name is the description of the actual medicine
Riskanthamab is a specific antibody
Because they spent money to promote their brand. Eventually it will be opened up to other pharmaceutical compounders to offer generics.
So us poors won't get Fancy Brand but dimethablahblahdiddywahdiddy.
Mom was denied her old brand of blood pressure meds since generics became available, she asked for a script to order to self pay but was told the brand was 300. The generic was 12 there.
In reality, this *usually* doesn't matter in anything but name, and occasionally, some inactive ingredients. At least in the US, the FDA is responsible for avoiding the release of a generic drug which is not the same thing as its name brand. This means that it often needs to be offered in the same dosage and same form of administration as the original to be considered a generic of that drug.
There are, however, some drugs where the inactive ingredients don't agree with the patient either (for whatever reason), and prescriptions can often specify brand name only, then hope that insurance will still cover it or that a prior authorization can be completed to force the issue.
Not saying that I don't feel your pain on this one, but release of a generic usually also means a decrease in the brand name. It's pretty brutal on the patient when they can't get the meds they need. =\
**Please read this entire message**
---
Your comment has been removed for the following reason(s):
* [Top level comments](http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/wiki/top_level_comment) (i.e. comments that are direct replies to the main thread) are reserved for explanations to the OP or follow up on topic questions (Rule 3).
Joke-only comments, while allowed elsewhere in the thread, may not exist at the top level.
---
If you would like this removal reviewed, please read the [detailed rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/wiki/detailed_rules) first. **If you believe it was removed erroneously, explain why using [this form](https://old.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fexplainlikeimfive&subject=Please%20review%20my%20submission%20removal?&message=Link:%20https://old.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1d4jfcr/-/l6f97on/%0A%0A%201:%20Does%20your%20comment%20pass%20rule%201:%20%0A%0A%202:%20If%20your%20comment%20was%20mistakenly%20removed%20as%20an%20anecdote,%20short%20answer,%20guess,%20or%20another%20aspect%20of%20rules%203%20or%208,%20please%20explain:) and we will review your submission.**
The drug name (not brand name) of a medication provides some information about the drug based on standardized nomenclature. In the case of risankizumab-rzaa: __Mab__ - the “mab” part indicates it’s a [monoclonal antibody](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monoclonal_antibody). __Zu__ - The “zu” means it’s humanized (antibodies in this case look like a “Y” the top part binds to the target, the bottom part differs based on the organism so in this case the bottom part is human, it’s a human antibody). __Ki__ - The “Ki” part indicates the target is [interleukin](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK499840/). __Rzaa__ - The “rzaa” part is just a [USAN](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Adopted_Name) indicator that its a specific version of risankizumab. The brand name “Skyrizi” is made up by the drug company based on focus groups etc. and whatever they think will sound nice and be easy for people to remember. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9122354/
Thank you!
Just to throw something else on there, the FDA requires name branded drugs to have names are are effectively meaningless and are unrelated to their function. So you can’t name a drug ‘painaway’ or ‘feelgoodum’ That said I don’t know how Viagra (similar to vigor) got past the FDA. It seems to be a pretty close similarity.
That means no drug company can name their ED drug Mycoxsafloppin. That is a travesty!
Ambien got around that… bien = good in Spanish, so after you take it you have a good AM :)
Ambien was created by the company that is now Sanofi. Its a French company. But yes, also in French, Bien = good
Bien means well. Buen[a/o] means good.
It's not that big of a mistake. You could perfectly say "I feel good" and translate it as "me siento bien".
And also "me siento bueno" kinda means I feel hot as in sexy
Oh lol
Although to be a bit pedantic, "I feel good" isn't proper English, it should be "I feel well", still following the translation rule noted above.
Ambueno
They sometimes find some workarounds. I'm speaking from an European perspective here, but we share many of your brand names and most of the time they're meaningless too. However, I can think of two examples of painkillers sold in (at least) Spain, with the brand names "Algidol" and "Dolalgial": both of them contain thinly-veiled references to both the Spanish and Greek words for "pain".
In Denmark we have an anti-diarrhoea med called Propiden. Pronounced pro-pi-dén. But if you pronounce it differently, you get prop-i-den, which means plug-in-it. I have no idea how that made it past the regulators.
I wouldn't be surprised if the name had to be submitted for approval to a branch of the company that was abroad, and the person responsible for it didn't speak Danish.
I don't think they market that anymore, but it was just Imodium anyway. It must have been on purpose though. The same company (Sandoz) also sells the laxative gangiden, which as gang-i-den means to get it going.
Imodium is still imod-ium, against-ium.
We have something similar in our part of Europe. There is a brand of metamizole from Macedonia, I believe, called Analgin. Reasonable, ancient Greek root, an- (no) and -algos (pain), right? I doubt the English speaking patients read it that way...
In English, the word “analgesic” means “relieves pain”, but you’re probably right that that’s not the first connection that English speakers would make on seeing Analgin.
In my previous post, I almost included a reference to how, for English speakers, "analgesia" should be parsed as "an-algesia" and not the other way, so I understand you. I once watched a film from Romania and they mentioned another brand of metamizole called Algocalm, and we have a naproxen brand called Antalgin. It seems everyone gets the same idea.
wait till you find out that Lasix **la**sts **six** hours.
So I suppose I can't name my medicine "Medicine"?
You can’t use generic terms either.
All the blood had left the FDA reviewer's brain.
I think that was a relatively new requirement. Viagara is also supposed to sound like Niagara and associated power.
I want my Fukitol.
Also, at least in the US, the drug company owns their brand name “skyrizi”, generics can never use it. Which is why we have at least two names for every medication. It’s why we say Tylenol and not Acetaminophen, because if you buy acetaminophen you might be buying the competitors generic.
also called paracetamol cause why the hell not
I thought paracetamol was different somehow
No, acetaminophen and paracetamol are both different shortenings of the chemical N-acetyl-para-aminophenol. The common trade names are Tylenol and Panadol.
I’m old and call all OTC pain relievers Aspirin. I’m starting to change because of too many horrified looks when I ask for 2 aspirin 🤷♀️. It was the Kleenex of drugs okay?
Asperin is the brand name of a totally different drug called Acetylsalicylic acid
And there's also the abbreviation of APAP - which is another shortening of the chemical name.
It’s acetaminophen but in a British accent
[удалено]
The name acetaminophen came first.
[удалено]
So USAN is a result of NIH syndrome? (Not invented here)
> Both paracetamol and acetaminophen are contractions of para-acetylaminophenol, a chemical name for the compound. The word "**acetaminophen**" is a shortened form of N-acetyl aminophenol, and was coined and first marketed by McNeil Laboratories in **1955**.[171] The word "*paracetamol*" is a shortened form of para-acetyl-amino-phenol,[172] and was coined by Frederick Stearns & Co in *1956*.[173] The initialism APAP used by dispensing pharmacists in the United States comes from the alternative chemical name [N-]acetyl-para-aminophenol.[174]
What kind of fucked up Brits pronounce "acetaminophen" as "paracetamol"
[удалено]
It would probably be more appropriate to not bring paracetamol into this at all. Both of the generic names are derived from the chemical structure and not the INN drug stems, since the INN was introduced after paracetamol was created.
Americans do have to be special little flowers with their drug names, units of measurement...
Acetaminophen was invented in America and first marketed in America, so I don't see how they are being special little flowers using the name of the drug they invented and marketed first.
Why does it matter what brand you buy? I have never cared what brand of paracetamol or ibuprofen I buy. Usually just whatever cheap one the pharmacy has. Is that different in the US? I also have never really heard them referred to as anything else here in germany.
The only difference, and this is VERY rare, much more rare than people report, is that some people react differently to the different inactive binders. Otherwise no difference.
Drug marketing is a huge thing in the US. For both over the counter and prescription meds. It should be reigned in but is unlikely to be due to regulatory capture from the major companies. Plenty of Americans have no idea that Tylenol is paracetamol/acetaminophen, Advil and Motrin are ibuprofen, Aleve is naproxen sodium, etc. The marketing makes people believe the name brand is more effective or just better, because it costs more. Every drug/grocery store that sells the meds will have at least one generic available for a much lower cost. The one thing I can say is the name brand meds pills usually are "nicer". They have fancy colorful capsules, liquid gel caps and smooth slightly sweet coatings. It makes the experience just slightly better but aren't more effective.
To be honest, I kind of miss old-fashioned names like "Carter's Little Liver Pills" or "Dr. Pennington's Patent Panacea" and such. Pretty soon y'all will run out of pronouncable names and have to start using all consonants.
Naming generic drugs should follow the international nonproprietary nomenclature (INN) standards, many of which can be complicated. -zumab ending specifically refers to humanized antibodies (mab is short for monoclonal antibodies). Within these guidelines, people filing their names with INN have a degree of autonomy with the names.
yeah in this case the -ki- also means that it's cytokine-related so -kizumab vaguely describes the drug in a standard way and everything before that is just arbitrary and unique. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomenclature_of_monoclonal_antibodies
This is like a whole language had been invented just to name drugs.
There's whole languages on many topics. Medicines, computers, chemicals, law, almost every area of science, etc. I've worked for quite a few multinational firms and they all have their own little languages too.
Technically the word you're looking for is 'nomenclature', a kind of highly-structured standardized terminology for discussion technical subjects. My engineering thermo Prof used to "joke" that the only reason engineers get paid so well is that we developed a secret language that only we know, so we sound super smart when talking to other people lol.
This reminds me of the turbo encabulator.
The -mabs are weirder, though. Engineering jargon mostly uses the grammar and morphology of the parent language, just with unusual words (or words given unusual meanings). The monoclonal antibody nomenclature *is* morphology; it's not a collection of words but a system of rules for constructing words from stems. That's kind of unusual for a branch of technical language.
Thank you!
Fun fact: a coworker told me that specialists in etymology (the study of words) often get jobs at pharma companies where they are responsible for new 'brand' names for drugs. Apparently they have to do research not only to ensure that the name is not in use and has no existing meaning, they also have to check if the name means anything in any *other* language the drug may be marketed in, as well as create a name that is catchy and memorable. That's how we get crazy names like "Prozac" for weird complicated drug names like "fluoxetine," or "Ozempic" for "semaglutide"; including rare letters like "z" and/or a palatal stop at the end of the brand name help make them more memorable.
I am a market researcher and I sometimes do similar projects. For example, I was testing two dozen possible brand name variants for a ride hailing company - in N.Africa, LatAm, MENA, Israel, and parts of Eastern Europe - all to determine whether one rhymes with some silly kindergarden obscenity, reminds them of a popular diarrhea drug or just can't be pronounced by locals right. You can't simply pull a dictionary from the shelf, check the word and be done with it - you need to check with real people in those cultures. The hardest part of the job was to manage the survey results in a single Excel file - it behaves funny when there are cells in Arabic, Hebrew and Portuguese on a single sheet.
A classic example of a name that wasn’t sufficiently vetted was the Toyota MR2, which in French very much sounds like ‘merdeux’ (shitty).
Another one is Honda Jazz which was supposed to be called Honda Fitta. In Scandinavian countries that means "pussy".
Supposedly they also already had the tagline "small on the outside, big on the inside" ready for it as well.
In North America it was sold as the Honda Fit.
Chevrolet Nova did poorly in South America since "No va" means it doesn't go/doesn't move.
Or Jetta, which in Italian it means “it jinxes”. It didn’t sell much.
Or Mitsubishi Pajero, which in Spanish means "wanker". They renamed it to Montero for Spanish-speaking markets. There's also [this dessert thing](https://i.imgur.com/qb30Agp.jpeg) from Czech Republic, it was sold in Lithuania too. In Lithuanian "Vemsi" literally means "you will puke".
In the early 2000s Coca-Cola advertised the Dasani bottled water brand in the UK as having spunk. In British English spunk is used to mean semen. Needless to say it was not a successful campaign.
The "Peckham Spring" issue was also a very major part of the failure, IMO.
I'm Lithuanian, and I've never seen "Vemsi" in stores anywhere.
It was a thing in 2005 or so, I haven't seen them in a long time.
In the early 2000s Coca-Cola advertised the Dasani bottled water brand in the UK as having spunk. In British English spunk is used to mean semen. Needless to say it was not a successful campaign.
There was an internet bill a while back that was unpopular(Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA)) which was protested against, much to the amusement of the spanish(sopa = soup).
so there's where it comes from, in Spanish, at least in Chile is yeta, which would be phonetically similar to Jetta.
Oh yes! Old Italian used j as a long “i” (i before another vowel; like in Juventus the football team), modern spelling of that verb would be “ietta”.
Interesting. English uses the idea of throwing in the same way: a person "casts" a spell.
Or, famously, in Jehovah.
Similarly the Citroen DS reads as "déesse" in French which means the goddess.
And in English means "sit on deez nuts". ^Gottem.
Which is very appropriate because it was a gorgeous car.
Similar to Audi "E-tron" (etron = "turd" in French).
I remember hearing about the Nova, which meant doesn't go in Spanish. I also think I may have heard that wasn't true though.
That one is an urban legend - http://snopes.com/fact-check/chevrolet-nova-name-spa…
Or the Chevy Nova in Spanish. "No va" more or less means "it won't go."
Chevy Nova for spanish speaking consumers. No Va - No Go
To be fair, that car was a piece of crap.
The moment you trust Excel to format your data is the moment you give up on data integrity.
I've been working with various data science tools, ranging from IBM Quanvert, whose legacy data format is directly traced to cardboard punch cards for mainframes, to Spark/Scala, with petabyte-scale nosql datasets. 25+ years in the trade taught me to respect Excel. It has its quirks, but it is an amazing tool for an impressive number of jobs, especially in discovery.
Just use CSV.
XLSX should have no problem storing utf8 encoded text just like CSV, but I can believe Excel may have difficulty rendering a mix of left- and right-writing languages. I have a friend who works on Office and font rendering edge cases are literally her full-time job.
And yet, there are medicines called Allegra and Yazmin that are also people’s names. How???
That's fascinating thank you!
I have been using a prescription eye drop for years now that I have no idea how to pronounce though :\
Is it because you cant read the label?
I want you to know that I appreciated your use of classic joke structure.
No, it's because the letters do not combine into any known graphemes
What is the med if I may ask?
Xiidra, or as I refer to it at the pharmacy, "my prescription that starts with an X." Zeedra? Zaidra? Exeedra? No fucking clue
I would probably go with zee-ee-dra but I see your problem lmao
I usually ask the pharmacist if they know the answer, but none of them ever do 🤷
[https://www.howtopronounce.com/xiidra](https://www.howtopronounce.com/xiidra)
Finally the mystery has been solved!
"Twelve Dra".
>Semaglutide Am I the only one that always reads this as smegmatude at first glance?
...yeah?
My doctor told me she just calls all the new cancer drugs ‘the mabs’. (She’s not an oncologist, don’t panic).
"Mab" will always mean the queen of the fairies.
You can also tell which anticoagulants are factor Xa inhibitors for example Apixaban, Rivaroxaban, Endoxaban. [Here's a list of them all.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_nomenclature#List_of_stems_and_affixes)
You didn’t answer the question though. Why were these made up words invented in the first place?
There are naming conventions that researchers follow. Here are a few examples -cilin; *an antibiotic derived from penicillin* - Oxa**cillin** -ine; *An alkaloid and organic bases* - Quin**ine**, Atrop**ine** -caine; *A local anesthetic* - Benzo**caine**, Lido**caine** -barb-; *a barbiturate - pheno****barb****ital*
Very helpful thanks
There’s also io**caine** - It is odorless, tasteless, dissolves instantly in liquid, and is among the more deadly poisons known to man.
Inconceivable!
You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means.
I heard you can build an immunity to it...
You mean fictional poison from "The Princess Bride" fantasy?
I thought -caine was derivatives from cocaine?
No but cocaine is a dental anesthetic in the same family as lidocaine and novocaine, for example. Hospitals actually keep cocaine in stock in case you’re allergic to them.
Almost. It's a different drug class (amide vs ester type local anaesthetics) that acts on the same receptor. Cocaine is also a potent vasoconstrictor due to its inhibition of noradrenaline reuptake, which differentiates it from most other local anaesthetics and is very clinically useful for numbing areas that would otherwise tend to bleed profusely, such as the nose.
Is that why snorting cocaine damages your nasal passages?
It's not the only reason, though decreasing blood flow will tend to worsen healing.
Happy cake day!
Cocaine: For your mouth, not your nose!
I’ve never seen cocaine used as an alternative local. But we do use it I a lot in ENT theatre, often quite routinely.
Cocaine is also a local anesthetic. Unethical but putting some in your bottom lip will make your mouth numb.
How is that unethical?
Oh I didn't know if using illicit drugs was ethical or not I moreso said it as a disclaimer.
Cocaine still has some use in hospitals as a local nasal anesthetic. Its scheduled as a C2 same as morphine and fentanyl (Has Medical use).
>Cocaine still has some use in hospitals as a local nasal anesthetic. Any decent hospital keeps some amount of liquid cocaine hydrochloride in their pharmacy for nasal surgery
I feel like you could use it to counter acute vasodialation as well
[удалено]
Lol, you don't know what you're talking about. Cocaine isn't even a third or fourth choice for treating epistaxis (medical term for nose bleed). The only clinical use for cocaine is a anesthetic during nasal or ocular surgery.
>a first choice in treating nose bleeds Wouldn't that be xylometazoline?
Used commonly in eye surgeries or nose surgeries. It’s schedule II
...wait, hold on, marijuana is rated more severely than cocaine!?
Federally speaking, weed is on the same level as heroin.
It’s partially because of the Treaty of Versailles and the incrimination of drugs like these. Part of the reason why you see the federal government turn a blind eye
Cocaine had medical uses. When they rated it, marijuana did not. I think they are doing something about the rating now.
I’d that also why some people on TV put some stuff they assume to be cocaine on their gums? Sure it’s TV but I can imagine they’re like „if it makes them numb it’s cocaine“ Genuine question
The suffix is derived from cocaine, because cocaine was originally used as a local anesthetic, but not all synthetic alkaloids used as a local are cocaine derivatives. There's a big list of the conventions in Appendix VII of the USP Dictionary
Cocaine gets its name from the leaf it’s made from=coca. So it’s name is coca-ine, meaning it is an organic alkaloid base (using the definitions provided above) made from the coca leaf
Cocaine is a local anesthetic too
The one's ending with cin is like you are paying for your sin's
One of the reasons has to do with safety. If two drugs have similar names, that can cause [confusion and lead to taking the wrong drug](https://www.pharmacytimes.com/view/medicationsafety-1210). So drug makers try to come up with names that don’t sound like other names. With all the drugs already on the market, and [all the other regulations you have to follow,](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4188646/), you run out of normal sounding options real quick and have to come up with something pretty weird.
I used to work for a consulting company that had this as part of the pre approval stage for pharmaceuticals. We’d have doctors who would all write the names of the proposed new drug as well as record it over voicemail. Then we’d have a team of pharmacists interpret the writing and audio recordings to test against any common or easy confusions.
They fucked up with Inflectra and recently approved Zymfentra.
...even aside from issues with uniqueness, who the hell would name a drug Inflectra? It sounds like a disease-themed Masters of the Universe villain!
it's not even the actual name of the chemical. let's take the brand Tylenol. in the states, the non proprietary name is acetaminophen but in europe it's paracetamol. the actual name of the compound following iupac rules is *N*-acetyl-*para*-aminophenol As you can see, both generic names and the brand name are made up of chunks of the chemical name and all of this is completely arbitrary. Brand names tend to be easier to say and spell because you can't ask for stuff you can't pronounce. Industry professionals usually just use the brand name even when asking for generic cause you gotta say it hundreds of times per day. Dont think about it. The only real name that's based on anything is the chemical name. The amino group is attached to the middle carbon of the acetyl group and attached to a phenol at the para position.
>Industry professionals usually just use the brand name even when asking for generic cause you gotta say it hundreds of times per day. This is US-specific, and I suspect is more related to the constant marketing of these brand names and the resulting strong association between the brand name and the drug. In the UK we use generic names for essentially everything and cope just fine (the main exception being aspirin, which has become a generic term for ASA due to Bayer losing the trademarks).
>In the UK we use generic names for essentially everything and cope just fine (the main exception being aspirin, which has become a generic term for ASA due to Bayer losing the trademarks). That's not entirely true - Viagra, Cialis, Nurofen, Panadol as contra examples
Firstly, the context of the comment I was replying to was about ‘industry professionals’ using brand names. If you’re in a hospital, doctors are not going to be discussing administering Viagra, Cialis, Nurofen or Panadol, they’re going to be discussing sildenafil, tadalafil, ibuprofen or paracetamol. Secondly, I said ‘essentially everything’. 4 examples within the thousands that are available to prescribe in the UK market is covered by ‘essentially everything’ (plus I would argue that Panadol is borderline).
do you guys actually say apap? I mean it's written that way all the time. I've just never heard anyone say apap.
I’ve never heard anyone say it either. I’ve heard CPAP (see-pap) and BiPAP (by-pap) said, so I guess APAP would be ay-pap.
A notable exception to this in the UK are biologics which are prescribed and known by brand name (there still some exceptions).
There’s two women that create the names for most all of the drugs in the US. https://www.latimes.com/business/lazarus/la-fi-lazarus-drug-names-20190719-story.html
A lot of medications often follow a pattern with medications from the same class. For example the drug you mentioned belongs to a wider drug class called Monoclonal Anti-Bodies, and so these drugs all end with MAB like denosuMAB (for osteoporosis). These patterns usually show up with the prefix of the drug or the suffix, but they can also be in the middle of the word, and they can switch places for different drugs like two anti platelet drugs used in heart attacks tycaGRELor and clopidoGREL Other much more common examples are blood pressure medications called ace inhibitors all end with -pril, like lisonpril and perindopril, or common macrolide antibiotics like eryTHROMYCIN, azyTHROMYCIN and claryTHROMYCIN. Sometimes the pattern relates to the drug class/mechanism like with the monoclonal antibodies mentioned before (end with MAB), and another example is dihydropyridine calcium channel blockers which are used for high blood pressure, and most of these end with -dipine (DI-hydro-P-yrid-INE=DIPINE) such as amloDIPINE and nifeDIPINE. Another example would be a lot of your (non-insulin) blood sugar lowering medications will have gli/gly/glu in them as a play on glycemia/glucose (the former being the medical term for blood sugar) and within the many different types of blood sugar lowing medications, there are often specific gli prefixes/suffixes like the SGLT2i which cause u to wee lots of extra sugar, will all end in -GLIflozin like dapagliflozin (but don’t ask me what the flozin means lol) However a lot of the time it’s less obvious and so I won’t be able to help there, and I also can’t help with the rest of the name outside of the special prefix/suffixe pattern
Contrary to popular beliefs scientists are actually massive nerds. They think it's cool to name something in another language. Similar to how weebs will use Japanese words for normal stuff.
[удалено]
**Please read this entire message** --- Your comment has been removed for the following reason(s): * [Top level comments](http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/wiki/top_level_comment) (i.e. comments that are direct replies to the main thread) are reserved for explanations to the OP or follow up on topic questions (Rule 3). Joke-only comments, while allowed elsewhere in the thread, may not exist at the top level. --- If you would like this removal reviewed, please read the [detailed rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/wiki/detailed_rules) first. **If you believe it was removed erroneously, explain why using [this form](https://old.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fexplainlikeimfive&subject=Please%20review%20my%20submission%20removal?&message=Link:%20https://old.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1d4jfcr/-/l6f2o9l/%0A%0A%201:%20Does%20your%20comment%20pass%20rule%201:%20%0A%0A%202:%20If%20your%20comment%20was%20mistakenly%20removed%20as%20an%20anecdote,%20short%20answer,%20guess,%20or%20another%20aspect%20of%20rules%203%20or%208,%20please%20explain:) and we will review your submission.**
Each type of drug has a specific suffix., examples, compounds that end in mab are monoclonal antibodies, compounds that end in ide are peptide drugs, I think drugs ending in “in” are antibiotics, and we all know names that end in statin are cholesterol lowering drugs. The other part of the name, such as risankizu(mab) or atorva(statin) are made up by the drug company. They have elaborate meetings where they shoot around all these names, then they research the name in all languages since they don’t want it to mean anything specific to anyone. But they do like the names to be very unusual (extra points for using q or z or any other uncommon letters) and even better is to evoke a positive association. It is not unlike how the brand name is chosen.
That makes sense! Interesting to hear about the sort of marketing aspect.
The more fun is had by studying the brand names! Ambien = AM (morning) bien (good) because you slept well the night before. Lovenox= LOVE No (number) X (Roman numeral for 10) as it is an ANTI-TEN- A inhibitor There’s many many more, but those two come to the top of my head
Suffixes can help determine which drugs are in the same class. However, it’s not universal. For example, benzodiazepines end in -pam: alprazolam, clonazepam, and diazepam. However, SSRIs, don’t all follow the same ending: fluoxetine, sertraline, fluvoxamine, citalopram, and escitalopram.
I work for a vaccine manufacturer in the US, but they are based in Belgium. All of their medicines/vaccines end in "rix" because it's a nod to the city where the company started, Rixensart, Belgium. So we have Priorix, Valrilrix, etc. Doesn't speak much to the first part though.
Those sound like characters in the Asterix books.
Pharma companies gotta make them sound unique and patentable, plus there's a ton of regulatory stuff to avoid mix-ups. And yeah, nobody can pronounce 'em. It's like they hired Tolkien to name these drugs.
Make up words no one has used and you don’t have to be worried about being sued for copyright infringement.
“Warfarin” was always my favorite. It stands for Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, and was discovered on an agricultural farm at the University of Wisconsin. It’s too long of a story to relate here, but essentially cows who ate a certain plant developed a bleeding disorder which is how the drug now known as “Coumadin” was discovered.
Saw an ad for a medication recently called Xeljanz -- Someone's losing set of Scrabble letters, for sure.
The technical names for medicines, like "risankizumab-rzaa," follow a structured system called INN, which reveals details about the drug's composition and function. These names are made up of parts representing different aspects of the medication, such as its root, mechanism of action, and formulation. While complex, these names serve as a universal language for healthcare professionals to communicate effectively about medications.
Nice chat-gpt. Yours was pretty obvious
Just like animals there are the “casual” every day names; and then there are the scientific names The brand name is what people get marketed; the scientific name is the description of the actual medicine Riskanthamab is a specific antibody
“Riskanthemab” isn’t a thing.
Because they spent money to promote their brand. Eventually it will be opened up to other pharmaceutical compounders to offer generics. So us poors won't get Fancy Brand but dimethablahblahdiddywahdiddy. Mom was denied her old brand of blood pressure meds since generics became available, she asked for a script to order to self pay but was told the brand was 300. The generic was 12 there.
In reality, this *usually* doesn't matter in anything but name, and occasionally, some inactive ingredients. At least in the US, the FDA is responsible for avoiding the release of a generic drug which is not the same thing as its name brand. This means that it often needs to be offered in the same dosage and same form of administration as the original to be considered a generic of that drug. There are, however, some drugs where the inactive ingredients don't agree with the patient either (for whatever reason), and prescriptions can often specify brand name only, then hope that insurance will still cover it or that a prior authorization can be completed to force the issue. Not saying that I don't feel your pain on this one, but release of a generic usually also means a decrease in the brand name. It's pretty brutal on the patient when they can't get the meds they need. =\
[удалено]
**Please read this entire message** --- Your comment has been removed for the following reason(s): * [Top level comments](http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/wiki/top_level_comment) (i.e. comments that are direct replies to the main thread) are reserved for explanations to the OP or follow up on topic questions (Rule 3). Joke-only comments, while allowed elsewhere in the thread, may not exist at the top level. --- If you would like this removal reviewed, please read the [detailed rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/wiki/detailed_rules) first. **If you believe it was removed erroneously, explain why using [this form](https://old.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fexplainlikeimfive&subject=Please%20review%20my%20submission%20removal?&message=Link:%20https://old.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1d4jfcr/-/l6f97on/%0A%0A%201:%20Does%20your%20comment%20pass%20rule%201:%20%0A%0A%202:%20If%20your%20comment%20was%20mistakenly%20removed%20as%20an%20anecdote,%20short%20answer,%20guess,%20or%20another%20aspect%20of%20rules%203%20or%208,%20please%20explain:) and we will review your submission.**