SGU Science Pic Of The Week: Loperamide Crystals
What you see here is not a supernova. It’s not even a piece of art by one of those painters who just randomly splashes paint on a canvas.
This is a loperamide crystal.
Loperamide is a drug that nobody wants to think about until we need it, and then it’s our best friend. Its function is to slow down the movement of the intestine so that anything in there hangs around longer instead of rushing to the exit door. This gives our body a chance to absorb more of the water in our gut instead of being expelled in a most distasteful way. In case it’s not painfully obvious by now, loperamide is the active ingredient in anti-diarrheal drugs.
The image itself is a false-coloured scanning electron micrograph taken by Annie Cavanagh and David McCarthy. It was a finalist in the Wellcome Image Awards of 2012.
So the next time you take this drug and you’re on the can cursing the bad shrimp you ate, remember the beauty of the drug that’s working hard to firm-up your feces.
Ahh yes, loperimide, the heroin-addict-in-distress’s favorite over-the-counter opioid friend when he’s broke and sick and about to be cast upon the rocks. Yes, really. An opioid that does not cross the blood-brain barrier well if at all, which is why you can buy all you want at Walmart. And it really does help when an opioid addict is detoxing. Not to a huge degree, but as anyone who has gone through it can tell you, any help is welcome. Loperimide was originally marketed as a scheduled controlled dangerous substance (sched IV, if memory serves) pain medication, but was later removed from the schedule because, even though it was an opioid, you’d die from a terribly-impacted bowel long before you got enough loperimide into you to give you a buzz. So hey, protected from addiction by death. Works for the DEA, right!