Significance Of Inorganic Chemistry To Medicine

Inorganic chemistry is important to medicine in a number of major ways such as drugs and medical devices which are used for treatment and research. There are some elements that are the backbone of drugs that are very important to mankind. These elements are discussed below. Biomedical uses of lithiumLithium batteries are used in bioengineering devices. Several kinds of lithium batteries have been developed for powering implantable bioengineering devices. These batteries which use lithium as anode include lithium iodine polyvinylpyridine, lithium silver chromate and lithium cupric sulfide are mainly used in heart pacemakers. Lithium thionyl chloride (Li/TC) batteries are mainly used in implantable devices which consume higher power in milliwatt range such as drug pumps and neurostimulators.

These batteries are also used in advanced pacemakers capable of doing other therapies like multisite pacing. Gold complexes, with anti-arthritic, anti-tumor and anti-HIV activitiesGold compounds as Disease-Modifying Antirheumatic Drugs, the DMARDS which are used to treat Rheumatoid Arthritis. This represents a general aversion to “heavy-metal therapy”. As discussed below, there are side-effects associated with chrysotherapy but, this is true for all chemotherapies. Having stated the above, there are a number of gold-based drugs currently available for the treatment of the symptoms associated with RA. They are several gold compounds which are used as anti-tumor such as cyclophosphamide, 6-mercaptopurine and methotrexate. These drugs show immunosuppressive and anti-inflammatory characteristics. Gold-based compounds have shown promising activity against a wide range of clinical conditions and microorganism infections including HIV-1. A typical example is auranofin which resulted in an elevated CD4+ T-cell count in an HIV patient being treated for psoriatic arthritis. In addition, reports exist on gold-based inhibitors of reverse transcriptase (RT), protease (PR) and viral entry of host cells.

These and other characteristics of gold-based HIV drugs are reviewed here. Gold-based compounds have shown promising activity against a wide range of clinical conditions and microorganism infections including HIV-1. A typical example is auranofin which resulted in an elevated CD4+ T-cell count in an HIV patient being treated for psoriatic arthritis. In addition, reports exist on gold-based inhibitors of reverse transcriptase (RT), protease (PR) and viral entry of host cells. These and other characteristics of gold-based HIV drugs are reviewed here. Cisplatin-based anti-cancer agentsCisplatin acts as an effective chemotherapeutic agent in treating diverse class of solid tumors. This compound contains platinum (pt), one chlorine molecule and two ammonia molecules. Among cancer therapeutics, cisplatin carries out its antitumor activity by binding to DNA and interfering with replication and transcription process which leads to apoptosis.