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New FDA rules may prompt Pig Latin drug names
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There once was a time when you could look at a drug name and make an educated guess as to what it was used to treat. Glucotrol and Glucophage are used to treat glucose. Neurontin has something to do with the treatment of neurons: epilepsy. Families of drugs had related names, too. Propranolol, atenolol and nadolol are all beta blockers, for example.
Things have changed. If you look at the name Alli, would there be any way for you to decipher that it is used for weight loss? Consider Lialda. Could you determine by its name that the drug is used to treat ulcerative colitis? Who could have guessed?
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Increasing government regulation has propelled this change; it has also created perplexing challenges for many health care professionals.
The FDA does not allow drug names that relate to the drug’s function; does not want the drug’s name to imply any claims regarding a drug’s efficacy; and does not want the name to imply that a drug is indicated for something beyond what the agency has approved. In essence, the drug names now mean nothing, nada, zilch.
It has become increasingly difficult to assess the health of a patient who has a list of medications with random meaningless names.
I’ll never forget my first Latin class in high school. A number of my classmates challenged the teacher as to why we had to study a “dead language” that no one spoke anymore. “Pig Latin” was more to our liking. It was a made-up language in which one takes the syllables of English words and speaks them in reverse order, affixing “ay” to the end. The word “button” becomes “uttonbay,” “star” becomes “arstay.” Are these words starting to sound like modern day prescription drugs?
Our teacher, Mr. Driscoll, proclaimed that someday Latin class would be of benefit, especially to those of us who planned to go into medicine.
Years later, in medical school, I had to admit Mr. Driscoll had been right. Many of the new terms that we were being exposed to had their roots in Latin.
Pick up a dictionary and look up almost any word. It usually is derived from and tethered to older words or has roots from words of other languages. Now look at the names of the latest drugs being released. They are not tethered. They have no roots.
It seems some of these names have been generated in a random fashion much the same way winning numbers are generated for the lottery. Letters are randomly plunked down like the numbered balls coming out of the rotating barrel, without rhyme or reason. But far better than a lottery prize, some of these drugs do go on to become blockbusters worth billions of dollars.
Yet, regardless of their potential marketing successes, these drug names are untethered, unattached to any mental constructs or scaffolding that one might have previously created in order to better understand and remember the intricacies of pathophysiology, pharmacology or anatomy. Because of this, such names are often harder to remember, harder to pronounce and confusing to use.
Unfortunately, the more guidelines and requirements the FDA places on naming drugs, the more confusing and less effective those names become.