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
It’s part of the intrinsic properties of the medications we are using.
Simplest example I can use right now is caffeine. We use it to stay awake. But what is a side effect? It keeps you awake when you don’t want to. Now it does a bunch of other things too, but I feel it’s a great starting point for understanding that side effects can’t just be removed. You’d have to use a different chemical that produces the desired effect.
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