Why do a lot of drugs in the same class end with the same letters?

[nuttynutskin]

Basically what the title says. For instance, beta blockers like metoprolol, propranolol, carvedilol, etc. Or say painkillers like oxycodone, hyrdrocodone, methadone. What's the reason for this?

 

[MrRoot]

It is because in that way you know what that drug will do.

 

[Scrofula]

Because they have to, basically. There are rules for that, set by the National Library of Medicine. Drugs get a "Generic Name Stem" based on their intended use, and sometimes a subgroup stem, or a sub-subgroup. So, while drugs ending in -ermin are all growth factors, there's:

-dermins for epidermal growth factors
-fermin for fibroblast
-nermin for TNF
-plermin for platelet-derived
-sermin for insulin-like
and -termin for transforming growth factors, which includes the sub-subgroup
-otermin, for bone morphogenetic factors.

(That link has THE list of all the name stems out there)

 

[nuttynutskin]

Interesting. I still don't get how they come up with the "name stems" or what they mean tho.

 

[Scrofula]

I think a lot of them just come from the original proto-drug, which were usually named after their molecular structure [ed. or the plants the original compound came from].

And then, eg., some were named because something Saint Barbara and guns and urea-->barbiturate (I'm serious, look the Wikipedia entry up). Something else reacting I don't remember, and you get barbital, the first in its class marketed, and named Veronal after a pretty city.

So the class of sedatives acting on that binding site of the GABAa receptor are determined to end with -arbital, with the beginning roughly matching the structural tweaks to the origianal barbital. So, allo, amo, apro, alphen, brallo, pento, pheno, seco, and thio.

Don't pretend like you don't remember singing that song on the bus, on the way to camp every summer.