What is the importance of drugs for the modern world? The creation of the contraceptive pill changed the perception of sexuality. Chlorpromazine has replaced hitting the head and electric shocks - once popular treatments for mental illness. Antibiotics have saved millions of lives because they can destroy even the most resistant bacteria. Do you know what revolution drugs caused in the 20th century?

The development of drugs important for medicine and saving human life was largely due to accident or observation of unexpected effects of a chemical compound. Here is a list of drugs that changed the world in the 20th century.

Drugs that changed the world: antibiotics

The first was penicillin, which - as it turned out later - had a fairly limited use. However, its discovery in 1929 not only saved millions of lives, but also gave rise to work on other antibiotics. Currently, over a hundred of them are used in medicine. They withstand the test of time, even when bacteria become resistant to them. Modern antibiotics are drugs that can destroy even the most resistant bacteria, have a narrow or wide spectrum of activity, thanks to which they allow you to choose a precise treatment.

Drugs that changed the world: biological drugs

They are created in a biotechnological process, where living cell organisms are used. This is because these organisms - such as the bacteriaEscherichia Coli- know how to make the protein we need. So we throw bacteria - like a cuckoo's egg - foreign DNA, and when it produces protein, we take it like honey from bees and give it to humans. Biological drugs are developed in "collaboration" with animals and plants that possess specific abilities. Our success is that we were able to recognize these amazing skills and use them to save human life and he alth.

Drugs that changed the world: chlorpromazine

The introduction of this substance to medical treatment in 1952 completely changed the fate of mentally ill people. Previously, they were "treated" with baths in ice-cold water, burning, electric shocks or blows to the head. This embarrassing charter of medicine was quickly covered, and although chlorpromazine did not turn out to be a cure for all mental disorders, understanding how it works allowed us to develop new drugs thatis successfully used today.

Drugs that changed the world: anti-cancer

The first drug that was used as an anti-cancer drug was mustard gas. It turned out to be effective - it killed cancer and… patient. In the second half of the nineteenth century, arsenic compounds began to be used in cancer therapy, which are also administered to patients today. The search for effective anti-cancer drugs was a stimulus not only to work on already known chemical compounds, but also to pay attention to natural substances. In the 1970s, platinum compounds, in the form of cisplatin and carboplatin, entered oncological treatment. These drugs saved many sick people.

Drugs that changed the world: hormones

The development of the contraceptive pill was of great importance for social change and the perception of human sexuality. The first contraceptive pill called Enovid went on sale in the USA in 1960. A milestone was obtained in 1921 of an extract from porcine pancreas, which, when given to a diabetic patient, eliminated the symptoms of the disease. Insulin obtained from pork pancreas was administered to patients until 1982, that is, until the production of recombinant insulin was developed. If not, we would have to raise 20 billion pigs worldwide to meet the treatment needs of 200 million people with diabetes.

Drugs that changed the world: heart drugs

The first of them appeared in the 1960s and gave a chance to significantly extend the life of people with a malfunctioning cardiovascular system. We owe the most to three groups of these drugs - beta-blockers, calcium channel blockers and convertase inhibitors (drugs with "pril" at the end of their name). The dissatisfaction of pharmacologists with the side effects allowed them to develop another, extremely important for cardiac patients, drugs - sartans. All of them are now commonly used in the treatment of hypertension.

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