How can drugs like Ingrezza be allowed to be prescribed if the way they work isn’t understood? Shouldn’t we understand how a drug works before the FDA clears it for use?

Question

How can drugs like Ingrezza be allowed to be prescribed if the way they work isn’t understood? Shouldn’t we understand how a drug works before the FDA clears it for use?

In: Other

Answer 1

This is much more common than you might think. There are many common drugs whose mechanism of action isn’t fully understood. You probably have Tylenol in your medicine cabinet – we don’t know how that works, either.