A blood
film I was looking at today had the diagnosis “eltrombopag”. Well… I won’t
lile. That meant nothing to me. But Wikipedia came to the rescue.
Eltrombopag
is a medication used to treat thrombocytopenia and severe aplastic anemia. It
is a thrombopoietin receptor agonist.
“Agonist”?
Do they mean “Antagonist”? Apparently (according to Google) “An
agonist is a drug that binds to the receptor, producing a similar response to
the intended chemical and receptor. Whereas an antagonist is a drug that binds
to the receptor either on the primary site, or on another site, which all
together stops the receptor from producing a response”.
I’ve
learned something here…
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