Changing misconceptions about medicine!

Yazawa Science Office, the editor of this book, is a science information group established in 1982.
This group of medical and scientific journalists is comprised of experts dedicated to popularizing science. Drawing on their experience, the authors of this book selected 14 representative, cutting-edge medications commonly used in our daily lives, such as headache remedies, cold remedies, skin remedies, and allergy medications, and hope to deepen the public's understanding of these medications.


In addition to basic knowledge about 14 representative drugs, we have answered various questions about drugs, such as how these drugs work when they enter our body, what their effects are, why side effects occur, and in what cases they become toxic.
It helps us understand medicine through episodes about the process of discovery and development of medicine, such as the discovery of the pain-relieving component of Tylenol, which is more effective than aspirin in relieving pain and has fewer side effects, in urine, the discovery of an anticancer agent during gas experiments during World War II, and the discovery of penicillin, a synonym for antibiotics, from blue mold.
In addition, it dramatically shows how insulin, considered the greatest achievement of 20th century medicine, was born from research conducted on dogs, and it vividly conveys the human effort to overcome disease by introducing the process of discovering vaccines to treat influenza viruses, including the Spanish flu, which infected 400 million people in two years.

● Among [antidepressants]
The most famous antidepressant (SSRI) is 'Prozoc', launched by the American pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly in the late 1980s.
Eli Lilly announced in 2005 that 50 million people worldwide were taking Prozac to treat depression.

Perhaps the biggest reason Prozac became famous worldwide was because so many healthy people took it, rather than because it was used to treat depression.
People believed that taking this medicine would make them feel better, more energetic, and more cheerful.
For example, a businessperson who has to start an important deal right now, a person who is often nervous when giving a lecture in front of a large group, or a timid man who is about to go on a first date with a woman, if he takes this drug before leaving the house, he will feel bright and confident.

In this way, Prozac has become positioned as a magic pill or household remedy for leading an active and healthy daily life and achieving success in life, rather than a drug that cures diseases.


● Among [steroids]
In fact, no drug has as amazing an effect as steroids.
For example, if you apply a steroid to a minor wound or inflammation on your skin, the inflammation will subside in a day, and new skin will regenerate after three days.
In addition, there are countless other medical conditions that require steroids, such as atopy, asthma, rheumatism, inflammatory bowel disease, multiple sclerosis, cerebral edema, chronic pain or loss of appetite, pneumonia, cancers such as leukemia, sudden deafness, and immunosuppression after organ transplantation.

However, there are few drugs that cause problems when used as carelessly as steroids.
This is because steroids have very different properties from many other drugs.
Steroids are not drugs that kill pathogens like antibiotics or antivirals, nor do they act directly on the cause of the disease like headache medications or antidepressants.
As mentioned before, steroids are symptomatic treatments that suppress the symptoms of a disease by utilizing the hormones our body originally possesses.


● Among [headache medications]
Acetaminophen, another ingredient in commercial headache medications, was discovered in the late 19th century, just like aspirin, but surprisingly, in human urine.

When the urine of a person who had taken painkillers was concentrated, bitter-tasting white crystals remained, and this was later reported as a substance with excellent pain-relieving effects by researchers who were looking for a painkiller without the side effects of aspirin.
This was the result of researchers licking crystals in urine.

Acetaminophen first appeared in the United States in the 1950s under the name Tylenol, and painkillers with the same ingredient subsequently appeared around the world.
Because this drug's structure is similar to that of aspirin, it was long thought that it had the same pain-relieving effect as aspirin, but in fact, this was different.
It has been discovered that acetaminophen acts directly on the nerve cells of the brain, but does not act on cells that contain peroxides (platelets and immune cells), so it does not cause gastrointestinal upset like aspirin.


● Among [antibiotics]
In fact, the problem of resistance arose almost immediately after the discovery of antibiotics.
In the early 1940s, bacteria that were resistant to penicillin emerged.
The enzyme penicillinase secreted by this bacterium changes part of the penicillin structure, that is, the part that acts on bacteria, making it ineffective.
And soon after, bacteria resistant to penicillin and other antibiotics began to appear one after another.
Accordingly, antibiotics have been synthesized to combat resistant bacteria, for example, with structures that are less likely to change structurally and are less likely to be affected by enzymes secreted by bacteria.
However, bacteria resistant to these antibiotics soon appeared.
In fact, it is said that when hospitals start using new antibiotics, resistant bacteria that no longer respond to the drugs appear within just a few months.

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