How can the same medication (e.g. ibuprofen) be designed to target specific body parts? Is that just marketing, or does the formulation make a difference?

Question

I see adverts all the time, ibuprofen designed to target joint and knee pain… then the next ibuprofen one might be targeted for headaches… I always wonder whether either would do the same job as the other one as they’re both ibuprofen.

In: Chemistry

Answer 1

Oral medications like ibuprofen work by flooding your blood with a high enough concentration of the medication that it actually affects you’re whole body, but it only has a noticeable impact in areas that are suffering from the symptoms it’s there to treat.

It “targets” pain and inflammation inasmuch as the medication is designed to treat those symptoms. It’s not that the medication after being ingested, magically travels just to the problem areas.