How does medicine know where to go in the body to fight disease? For example a throat infection vs a stomach infection vs an infected cut on your foot?
In: Chemistry
It doesn’t. When you ingest medicine, it dissolves in your stomach for your body to carry around much like any other nutrient.
Instead, some modern medicines will be given certain chemical compounds designed to stick to the kind of tissue that appears in the part of the body it’s meant to help. For example, if you have a medicine that’s supposed to help with strep throat, it will be chemically designed in such a way that it will very effectively bond with the tissue in your throat while also not doing so with any other tissue. Thus, no matter what direction the body takes it, it will hopefully continue flowing until the body finally sends it past the throat, where it will stick to the tissue and end it’s journey. This means at least most of the medicine will be able to do it’s job right.
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