Science Attacks The Mystery Of Tylenol

nm1m writes "For decades, millions of physicians have advised their patients to take acetaminophen - the drug behind "aspirin-free" pain relievers like Tylenol - without understanding how or why the popular medicine works. Now, a professor at Brigham Young University has discovered what could be the enzyme the drug attacks to relieve pain."

Comments

Re:is this good science?

[sessamoid]

Therefore the way that tylenol works is that it blocks this one enzyme. Since it seems related to pain let's call it COX-3

It's not nearly as simplistic as you assume. The cyclooxygenase enzymes are very well defined. We know them down to the atom. The myriad actions aren't necesarily understood in all parts of the body, but the mechanism by which they're involved in pain response is fairly well-understood. These researchers did not just pick "COX3" as the name out of blind stupidity. I'm assuming that the cyclooxygenase-3 is chemically very similar in both structure and function to the other two. There are at least hundreds and thousands of other enzymes related to pain response, but we don't name them COX just because they're related to pain.

Re:How Tylenol Works?

[sessamoid]

PCP and ketamine were used as anaesthetics until the 60s/70s.

Actually, ketamine is still used occasionally as an anesthetic and for procedural sedations, particularly in children who have fewer side-effects from it. I wasn't in practice in the 60's and 70's, but I don't recall ever hearing about PCP being used as an anesthetic, and it's a doubtful thing considering it has no real value as an anesthetic that I can think of. My experience with PCP is thankfully limited, however.

Morphine is still widely prescribed, and I'm pretty sure the doctors don't know too much about it

Actually the action of morphine on mu opiate receptors in the brain is fairly-well (though not completely) understood.

If I'm wrong, correct me so I don't make the same mistake again.

Request granted. ;)

Tylenol kills brown snakes

[ChadN]

A recent issue of "Science News" magazine (within the past two months), had an article about an experiment where Guam's brown snakes were fed rats stuffed with about 6 acetaminophen (the active ingredient in Tylenol) tablets. All the snakes that ate the rats later died, even the ones that regurgitated them fairly quickly after swallowing them.

Since the brown snake is an introduced pest, and is highly dangerous to the bird population, this discovery is seen as a way to poison the snakes, with hopefully minor side effects for other animals.

And if I were a lawyer, I'd stick to Ibuprofin (ba-dum-bum)