So many beautiful names

So many beautiful names

Mother Nature, the biggest in the world manufacturer of natural medications, is winning the competition with creative minds of the pharmaceutical companies. Theophrastus, Greek philosopher and a student of Aristotle and Dioscorides (circa 372-287 B.C.) wrote Medicinal Matters, in which he prescribed the experiences of ancient Egyptians, Assyrians, and Babylonians and the use of 600 plants or herbs. His book was translated into Latin with the name Materia Medica and served as a guide to doctors and pharmacists for fifteen centuries. From that time Latin names of herbs have become well known and used throughout European countries and almost everywhere in the world. Names of herbs, trees and other plants mentioned in Materia Medica are inimitable in its beauty. They don’t confuse people,  sound or look similar, and have different spelling.  What is a problem with names of the drugs produced today by pharmaceutical companies?  Why they are so confusing not only to patients, but to the doctors too?

Recently I spoke with Mary, 84 years old woman,  one of my neighbors. She suffers from arthritis pains, especially during night time. She told me that doctor prescribed her Celebrex.  Suddenly she said, ” I am not sure if I’ll start taking Celexa because it’s a very strong drug.”

“Mary, I am getting confused. Did your doctor prescribed to you Celebrex or Celexa?” I asked her. “I don’t think he gave you prescriptions for both medications.” Mary looked at me and continued, “What is the difference? I think it’s the same medication.”

“Of course, it is not the same medication, dear.” 

Mary, as other hundreds of thousands consumers, is suffering from artrithis pain and other illnesses. She did not notice the difference in use between similar names of two different drugs, and she is not alone. Some patients believe that Celexa is just a shorter name for Celebrex. Other people assume that the diabetes drug Actos is an abbreviated name for the bone drug Actonel.  If you mix-up them, you got a big problem. 

There is another important issue. One major study by the U.S. Pharmacopea which is helping set drug standards and promoting patient safety, reported that nearly 1,500 commonly used drugs have names so similar to at least one other medication. These similarities have already caused mix-ups. It means that your doctor can easily make a mistake and  prescribe you one drug instead of another. Today in our rapid-fire lives doctors are using a super-modern method called e-prescriptions. Your doctor  can pick and click, for example, the antifungul pill Lamisil instead of the epilepsy drug Lamictal which look very similar in spelling on the alphabetized screen. The result of such error can be deadly.

Pharmaceutical companies are very active and successful in creating numerous chemical compounds, called drugs. Unfortunately they did not develop the same creative approach in giving names to their drugs. You probably noticed already from my example with Mary that the painkiller Celebrex sounds like the antidepressant Celexa? The old diabetes drug Amaryl (now is named Razadyne) and  Reminyl, the Alzheimer’s drug, sound alike? What about the blood-clotting Amicar and the cholesterol pills Omacor? Don’t these names sound almost the same, too?

You really need to develop a simple method to remember what are two drugs with similar names are for. To memorize the difference between last two, use your imagination and play with words. What if “Amicar”contains two words in combination? A French word “Ami” means a friend and “Car,” an English word. If you try to make a common sense of it, you come to a meaning, “A Friend’s Car?!”  When a pharmaceutical company created a name Amacor, did its experts in names mean that ”the friend’s car” can treat the blood-clotting!?  

Now it’s clear how we can remember Amacor. What about Omacor. The name “Omacor” as the word, doesn’t have any explanation in any languages. So, you don’t have any choice, but just remember that it helps with cholesterol problems. What other consumers or health care providers will do if they don’t have rich imagination, good memory and don’t have time to play games with words? I hope,  my question is not pure rhetorical. 

The good news are that after many mix-ups Omacor is now re-named as Lovaza. What about other mix-ups?  Ever heard about the Klonopin helping to stop seizures? Be aware! It can be confused with the gout medicine Colchicine or with the generic drug Clonidine for high blod pressure. This trio of serious medications  and many other drugs, looking, spelling and sounding alike, are among the most common types of medical mistakes that will not treat, but can kill you if they will be prescribed and used wrongfully. 

As Roman orator, statesman, and philosopher, Cicero (106-43 B.C.) said once, ”While there’s life, there’s hope.” This fall we’ll have a new information tool to check errors in prescriptions.  Non-profit Institute for Safe Medication Practices in partnership with online health service www.iGuard.org will launch soon a new Web site for patients that will educate them about drugs and its proper usage.  But who will stop dangerous games with the drugs names?

Check different drugs for similarity in names and difference in usage at http://www.usp.org

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