Why can’t we improve medicines to not have side effects?

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This question came about as my wife has just started a course of steroids to treat her Crohn’s Disease. They work amazingly well, amazingly quickly… But they are only a temporary solution as they have a range of significant side effects such as thinning of the bones, insomnia, etc…

Steroids are “old” in medical terms – why haven’t we managed to remove the side effects yet?

In: Chemistry

18 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Side effects are not a by product or a contaminant, they are just affects which are different from the desired, theraputic affect. it, they often cannot be ‘removed’ without also canceling the desired affect. Often, another med might be found where the other affects are not as much of a problem, in other cases, one must weigh the trade off. I for one, would be happy to have all my hair fall out and be cured of cancer….. and so on.

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