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Inflammatory, Hypersensitivity and Immune Lung Diseases, including Parasitic Diseases.
Published in Fred W Wright, Radiology of the Chest and Related Conditions, 2022
This has long been recognised as a more chronic and serious condition than Loeffler's syndrome. It may affect several organs, including the lungs and kidneys and give rise to systemic symptoms, similar to those seen with TB (night sweats, weight loss, etc.). It may be allied to polyarteritis nodosa (see p. 19.76). Spontaneous recovery is unusual but the condition often shows a good response to ACTH and/or steroids. Before these were available neo-arsphenamine (as used for syphilis) was used, sometimes with a good result.
Plant-based Nanomaterials and their Antimicrobial Activity
Published in Mahendra Rai, Chistiane M. Feitosa, Eco-Friendly Biobased Products Used in Microbial Diseases, 2022
Mayuri Napagoda, Priyalatha Madhushanthi, Dharani Wanigasekara, Sanjeeva Witharana
Antimicrobial agents could be considered as one of the most successful types of chemotherapeutic agents in the history of medicine with respect to their role in the control of infectious diseases that save millions of lives (Aminov 2010). Despite the availability of several reports on the use of various kinds of antibiotic agents even before the advent of modern medicine, the discovery of arsphenamine by Paul Ehrlich in 1909 was one significant achievement. Arsphenamine was an arsenic derivative that showed activity against Treponema pallidum, the causative agent of syphilis (Durand et al. 2019). The accidental discovery of penicillin in 1928 marked the dawn of a new era in this branch of medicine. After returning from a holiday, Alexander Fleming, who was a bacteriologist at St. Mary’s hospital in London, observed that one of his petri dishes inoculated with Staphylococci and left on a laboratory bench was contaminated with a fungus (Swann 1983). He noticed that the fungal contaminant in the petri dish was suppressing the growth of nearby bacteria. The contaminant fungus was identified as Penicillium notatum, and the antibacterial compound that was produced by this fungus was named “penicillin”. Fleming published his findings in “The British Journal of Experimental Pathology” in 1929 to disclose that penicillin was capable of inhibiting bacterial growth in vitro (Fleming 1929). However, he did not manage to purify or characterize the activity of penicillin. Instead, he thought that it could be useful as a local antiseptic (Aminov 2010).
Treatment of syphilis
Published in Dinesh Kumar Jain, Homeopathy, 2022
“In the past potassium iodide, mercury, bismuth and organic arsenical compounds were used in syphilis. Mercury was originally used for syphilis but was superseded by bismuth and arsphenamine” (Warner, 1964, p. 731). These metallic compounds are highly toxic to the body; that's why they are not used nowadays. They have been replaced by antibiotics today.When mercury was being used in the treatment of syphilis by oral route, the medication had been administered several times a day for a long period of time … The proto iodide of mercury in doses of 1/5 to 1/2 grain was probably the most commonly administered salt. It is powerful, containing 61% of the metal but it is very liable to cause intestinal irritation and diarrhoea … Mercury with chalk in a dose of 1 to 3 grains or the tannate of mercury in 1/2 to 1 grain dose were appropriate forms of medication … Injection of soluble mercurial salts were also used for a long period of time.(Gottheil, 1913, pp. 361–435)
Multitargeting approaches involving carbonic anhydrase inhibitors: hybrid drugs against a variety of disorders
Published in Journal of Enzyme Inhibition and Medicinal Chemistry, 2021
The central paradigm in drug design, at least for the last century, was the concept introduced by Paul Ehrlich of the “magic bullet”1. Considered the founder of chemotherapy, mainly due to his excellent work on the treatment of syphilis with arsphenamine (Salvarsan) and structurally related derivatives2, this scientist introduced the concept of drug target and pinpointed to the fact that an effective drug should specifically act on one target in order to manifest its therapeutic benefits. Furthermore, many of the side effects that a drug shows may be considered as being due to off-targeting, that is, interactions with diverse biomolecules than the real target, according to the magic bullet theory. As a consequence, most if not all modern drugs in clinical use were discovered considering these concepts, which continue to influence generations of medicinal chemists in the search of both new drug targets as well as compounds that should effectively, and possibly specifically interact with them for producing beneficial therapeutic effects3.
A multiparametric organ toxicity predictor for drug discovery
Published in Toxicology Mechanisms and Methods, 2020
Chirag N. Patel, Sivakumar Prasanth Kumar, Rakesh M. Rawal, Daxesh P. Patel, Frank J. Gonzalez, Himanshu A. Pandya
The receptive substances theory introduced by John Langley in 1905 was the turning point in the milestone of the drug discovery process. Paul Ehrlich, the Father of modern chemotherapy, developed synthetic drugs and arsphenamine (Salvarsan) which was later introduced into market by Sachiro Hata. Those were the first rational approaches guided by structure-activity relationship for sleeping sickness and syphilis in the year 1910 (Lednicer 2006). QSAR (Quantitative Structure-Activity Relationship) found its root from toxicology field and relied on chemical structure and experimentally determined toxicity endpoints to develop relationships. After the discovery of QSAR approach by Hansch and Fujita in 1960, structure- and target-based techniques emerged as two approaches for drug discovery and development (Bolten and DeGregorio 2002). Drug discovery relies on disease mechanisms and their understanding which is further carried through target identification, lead compound discovery, and clinical trials (Barabási et al. 2011; Chen and Butte 2013).
Omics of antimicrobials and antimicrobial resistance
Published in Expert Opinion on Drug Discovery, 2019
Vladislav M. Chernov, Olga A. Chernova, Alexey A. Mouzykantov, Leonid L. Lopukhov, Rustam I. Aminov
Despite the fact that the first mass-produced antimicrobials obtained from arsphenamine and sulfonamide classes were completely synthetic, antimicrobial drug discovery has followed a serendipitous path determined by the discovery of β-lactams [1,3]. Extensive antimicrobial drug discovery programs were implemented to uncover the diversity of naturally occurring compounds produced by environmental microbiota, mainly soil microbiota. Extremely broad, and often excessive, use of these compounds in human and veterinary medicine as well as for non-therapeutic purposes in agriculture have, however, resulted in a widespread antimicrobial resistance, including pathogens. To deal with this problem, naturally occurring antimicrobials were gradually modified to produce semi-synthetic derivatives as subsequent generations of antimicrobials. It is important to note here that no new classes of antimicrobials have been discovered since the 1980s, and the main objective of antimicrobial drug discovery has been focused on the sequential modification of existing antimicrobials to improve their pharmacokinetic parameters and overcome resistance [1].