Title: Sulfonamide (medicine) - Wikipedia
Headings: Sulfonamide (medicine)
Sulfonamide (medicine)
Contents
Function
History
Preparation
Varieties
Side-effects
See also
References
External links

Content: Humans, in contrast to bacteria, acquire folate (vitamin B 9) through the diet. Structural similarity between sulfonilamide (left) and PABA (center) is the basis for the inhibitory activity of sulfa drugs on tetrahydrofolate (right) biosynthesis. Sulfonamides are used to treat allergies and cough, as well as antifungal and antimalarial functions. The moiety is also present in other medications that are not antimicrobials, including thiazide diuretics (including hydrochlorothiazide, metolazone, and indapamide, among others), loop diuretics (including furosemide, bumetanide, and torsemide ), acetazolamide, sulfonylureas (including glipizide, glyburide, among others), and some COX-2 inhibitors (e.g., celecoxib ). Sulfasalazine, in addition to its use as an antibiotic, is also used in the treatment of inflammatory bowel disease. History
Sulfonamide drugs were the first broadly effective antibacterials to be used systemically, and paved the way for the antibiotic revolution in medicine. The first sulfonamide, trade-named Prontosil, was a prodrug. Experiments with Prontosil began in 1932 in the laboratories of Bayer AG, at that time a component of the huge German chemical trust IG Farben. The Bayer team believed that coal-tar dyes which are able to bind preferentially to bacteria and parasites might be used to attack harmful organisms in the body. After years of fruitless trial-and-error work on hundreds of dyes, a team led by physician/researcher Gerhard Domagk (working under the general direction of IG Farben executive Heinrich Hörlein) finally found one that worked: