CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
This work, Chemistry and Therapeutic Effects of Analgesics is an effort to bring together various works which has been done about drugs with analgesic properties, comparison of their effectiveness to pain management and the chemistry associated to pain. It also seeks to bring to the interest of a chemist, the import of application of a specialize knowledge such as chemistry to preparing selected analgesics, showing latent potency of chemical knowledge in solving the problem of various types of pain, with relatively less cost.
The effectiveness of analgesics cannot be over-emphasized; hence this work to an extent reveals the broad world of analgesic and enclosed it with such truth as how it’s been chemistry all along even to the therapeutic nature of these analgesics.
What is an analgesic?
An analgesic, known colloquially as a painkiller, is any natural or synthetic drug that relieves pain (produces analgesia) without causing loss of consciousness, paralysis, or other major impairment of sensory function or nerve impulse conduction. It is different from anesthetics, which produces anesthesia i.e. relives pain by causing loss of consciousness.The word analgesic derives from Greek an- (“without”) and -algia (“pain”). The term analgesia refers to an absence of the sensation of pain while still being conscious.
Morphine
| Morphine is a highly-potent opiate analgesic and is the principal active agent in opium and the prototypical opioid. |
An analgesic is any member of a diverse group of drugs used to relieve pain. The type of analgesic used depends on the severity of pain; whether it is acute (self-limiting in duration, such as childbirth) or chronic (lasting more than three months) and the response to other medications (Uretsky 2002). However the World Health Organization’s “pain ladder,” originally developed for cancer-related pain, is a widely used protocol for determining in a stepwise manner the suitable drug and dosage for treating pain (WHO, 1990). The choice of analgesia is also determined by the type of pain: for neuropathic pain, traditional analgesia is less effective, and there is often benefit from classes of drugs that are not normally considered analgesics, such as tricyclic antidepressants and anticonvulsants (Dworkin et al. 2003). Analgesic drugs act in various ways on the peripheral (PNS) and central nervous systems (CNS), either blocking the signal from the PNS or distorting the interpretation by the CNS (Uretsky 2002).
Medical researchers have developed widely diverse compounds for treating pain, including some synthetic opioids that produce an analgesic effect but that are much less likely to induce dependency. It is important to note that some pain is productive, acting as a warning of injury and a guide to diagnosis and treatment; thus it is also important to realize that while analgesics relieve symptoms, they do not affect the underlying cause (Uretsky 2002).
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