Example: Atomoxetine is believed to increase norepinephrine in the brain, to treat ADHD. What do you mean, believed? Then how was it successfully developed to do that in the first place, if the mechanisms of action to effect that change are not known?
Apparently this is not uncommon in medication. How is this possible?
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It is not so important to know the mechanism of how it works just as long as it works. It is very hard to figure out exactly how every drug works in the body. But it is not that hard to just try a range of different drugs to see what they do. And then when you find a drug which works for a specific medical problem you prescribe it to patients.
In order to find a new drug what you would typically do is to look at all the other drugs which have been experimented with. There are similar chemical structures to the different drugs so you can start to see some patterns. Some chemical structures affect some areas of the body, and some diseases looks to be connected to these parts of the body. You can just synthesize different drugs with similar chemical structures and then start experimenting. First you experiment on animals, both to see if they are safe and to see if you can see any changes in them. Then you run a limited trial on a few subjects. If it looks promising and safe you run a full scale study.
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