The Enantiomers of Thalidomide and its Effect on Humans
Children born between 1957 and 1958 in West Germany were 1 in 3 times likely to be born with a physical or neurological defect. This was because on the 1st of October, a new over the counter drug was introduced to help pregnant women with their morning sickness but while the drug did a good job at helping to cure morning sickness, it also held its own gift.
Thalidomide was introduced over-the-counter and women who used it testified to the swift effect when it came to relieving morning sickness. If we want to be realistic with one another, morning sickness can be very annoying and disturbing as a pregnant women. The vomiting, the inability to brush teeth because it will likely cause one to vomit, the continuous spitting out of saliva, the drowsiness and inability to get up because it looks like the entire weight of the world is on you and the overall weakness can be frustrating.
When the drug was introduced, it did relieve the pregnant women from their morning nightmare but they gave them a worse horror the following year when children born had a defect which was either additional limbs or damaged brains. Doctors noticed this had happened but they couldn't tell what could be causing it at first until Widukind Lenz and William Mcbride noticed that children who were born with the deformity were babied of mothers who had taken the morning sickness drug during their pregnancy.
They began conducing researches and studies and by the year 1961, they had confirmed links between the drug and the birth defect and the drug had to be pulled out of the shelves to prevent the defect but at this time about 40% of the children born with this defect had died but what could have caused this defect in a drug that great?
Scientists gave the drug as a result of one of the molecules they found but didn't know that the drug had two different molecules. The drug which is made up of three connected rings of Carbon and Nitrogen, as well as hydrogen and oxygen known as Chiral molecules that are made up of the same molecules but arranged differently which means that although the two molecules are the same in molecular numbers, their structure would be the same but in mirror images which means they in opposing order and would act differently.
In Thalidomide, the R-Enantiomer is the Mirror image of the S-Enantiomer and since they look the same but are different, they can react to things also differently and this was what happened in the body. Studies now showed that the R-Enantiomers helped with the morning sickness, while the R-Enantiomer caused birth defects that were severe. When Scientists discovered this, they wanted to isolate the R-enantiomer, leaving the S-Enantiomer so they could still treat morning sickness associated with pregnancy but it was found that the R-enantiomers can switch to become a S-enantiomer in the body which means that it isn't still safe for pregnant women even if they isolated the two Enantiomers.
Still on Enantiomers, Methamphetamine is a drug with two enantiomers and it is usually associated with street drug which is what it is since it is psychoactive but the drug only shows its bad side in its R-Enantiomer formation (Meth)but in its S-Enantiomer, it is sold as an over-the-counter medication as a vasodilator.
Back to Thalidomide, after years of rejection as a result of its birth defect problem, the FDA finally approved the drug not for pregnant women but to treat Hansen's disease which you might know as leprosy. Scientists are still researching on its benefit in treating other conditions including breast cancer.
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Reference
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https://link.springer.com/article/10.2165/00003088-200443050-00004
https://wjbphs.com/sites/default/files/WJBPHS-2024-0250.pdf
https://academic.oup.com/toxsci/article/122/1/1/1672454
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3573415/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4112512/
https://www.usdtl.com/d-l-isomers
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5399046/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/instance/1742651/pdf/v079p00127.pdf