Are All the Good Drug Names Already Taken?

Am I the only one who thinks new drugs have worse and worse names as time goes on? I mean Zepbound, Wegovy, Mounjaro? Those names make me think of words and phrases like hell bound, we go why and mañana (Spanish for tomorrow). And isn’t there a Nissan car model called Murano?

There are some odd rules for naming drugs in this country. For example, they can not hint at what the drug does, which would seem the most logical criterion for naming a drug. One older drug that was named after what it does is Antabuse or Alcoban (disulfiram) in the US and UK, respectively. That is a medicine that makes you sick if you drink alcohol. Think anti-abuse and alcohol-banned. Another logical older drug name was Glucophage (metformin), which sounds like Latin for “someone who eats sugar”. In the over-the-counter market we have Gas-X and I’m not sure if that was grandfathered in or someone at the FDA had a senior moment.

Think how much easier it would be for people to keep track of their medicines if we had names that hint at what they do, instead of just looking and sounding abstract. I mean Peemore would be an ideal name for a diuretic, Hackless a good one for a cough medicine, Quitcig for a smoking cessation drug, Remember for a dementia drug and Chill for a tranquilizer. I could go on, but you get my drift.

Some drugs have had to change names because of late realizations of their risk of confusion with other pharmaceuticals. Omeprazole, developed in Sweden, was named Losec. It still has that name in many countries, but in the US, presumably because vowels are pronounced less distinctly here, it was felt that the name could be confused with Lasix, the diuretic. So it was renamed Prilosec here.

The antidepressant Trintellix (vortioxetine) used to be called Brintellix. That name was scrapped because of concerns that it could be confused with Brilinta (ticagrelor), a blood thinner.

One odd thing about drug names is that one generic can have two brand names when a drug has been approved to treat more than one condition. Wellbutrin (bupropion) was used as an antidepressant for many years before it was discovered that it could help people quit smoking. It was rebranded and sold as Zyban because the worry was that smokers would resist taking an antidepressant to quit smoking because of the unfortunate stigma of antidepressants.

Viagra was launched years after the first sildenafil formulation, Revatio, was approved for treating pulmonary hypertension. After the last phase of testing Revatio, many male patients refused to give back the pills they had taken in the study. The researchers asked why, and started hearing stories of enhanced erections. They went back to the drawing board and did a formal study of this indication and the rest is pharmaceutical history.

The Internet is full of suggestions for funny drug names. One of the better ones I have seen is that Viagra should be called Peniscillin. But that wouldn’t fly because it would be too easily confused with the antibiotic…