Etymology of oxycodone

[red22]

Medic8 states that "oxycodone" derives from hydroxyl, codeine, and ketone. link

Now, the current standard method of synthesis uses thebaine as the starting material, so it's not necessarily chemically modified codeine.

Would it be more accurate if we just took all the semi-synthetic opiates and renamed them "opioid agonist 1," "opioid agonist 2" ...

 

[ro4eva]

No, it wouldn't be more accurate.

Each opioid are mu, delta and kappa agonists but varying affinity to each receptor. Some have additional effects (e.g. Methadone and NMDA antagonism or Pethidine and Dopamine/Norepinephrine inhibition), and they each have different half-lives and so forth.

 

[red22]

What justifies the "codone" in oxycodone? "Oxycodone" suggests that the substance is chemically modified codeine. Oxycodone was given said name many years ago; would it be more accurate if it had its own unique name or is the chemical structure intrinsically related to codeine?

My motivation for starting this thread is people going around stating oxycodone is "synthetic heroin." That statement is obviously backwards on many levels, but I'm just trying to gain more of an understanding of the etymology.

 

[ro4eva]

Taken from Wikipedia:

Oxycodone's chemical name is derived from codeine. The chemical structures are very similar, differing only in that

* Oxycodone has a hydroxyl group at carbon-14 (codeine has just a hydrogen in its place), hence oxycodone;
* Oxycodone has a 7,8-dihydro feature, whereas codeine has a double bond between those two carbons; and
* Oxycodone has a carbonyl group (as in ketones) in place of the hydroxyl group of codeine, hence the "-one" suffix.

 

[red22]

I'm sure oxymorphone is just as similar to codeine as oxycodone...

 

[Bob Loblaw]

I don't see a problem with this nomenclature thread .

 

[Slapdragonx]

It is meant to be like codeine to morphine, but like oxycodone to oxymorphone.

The metabolisms are parallels.