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
There are different types of side effects. On-target side effects are intrinsic to the medicine and can’t be removed. Off-target side effects can be mitigated by making a more selective drug.
Steroids, for example, have significant on-target side effects where the same biological target can cause a benefit in one organ/tissue but a side effect in another organ/tissue. Steroids also affect many different biological targets and specific steroids work better for certain diseases.
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