Heartburn

I'm a nerd and talk about nerdy things, but hey that's my life and I don't care! So if you're not into my nerdy posts than this one is definitely not for you.

I don't know how many of you suffer from heartburn or GERD, but I'm learning about the drugs used to treat these diseases, and they are fascinating. Fascinating and tricky. Tricky in that drug manufacturers are probably the most genius, conniving and lucrative suckers out there.

Take Nexium and Prilosec for example. These are both H2-antagonists used to prevent heartburn by turning off the acid pumps in your stomach. But they are the exact same drug! Exactly the same. Say you had a prescription from your doc for Prilosec (even though it's OTC) and it didn't work. If your doc then prescribed Nexium you'd be wasting your money. Here's why:

The chemistry behind this scheme is a resolution of the enantiomers. What this means is that all drugs have two forms. Form R and form S. But only one of those forms is active (this is the case for all drugs). So Prilosec (omeprazole) is a racemic mixture (has both forms R and S --> S being the active form and R being the inactive form). Nexium however, is resolved to only containing the active form S. What this means is that it takes less of the Nexium dose to achieve the same effect as the Prilosec dose. Same drug, less dose, same effect. Amazing huh?!

Wow- science is cool and I'm constantly being blown away by the intelligence of scientists who can figure this crap out. Wow.