What’s in a Name, Miplyffa?

The Medusa of medicine

Ronald C. Flores-Gunkle
Crow’s Feet
Published in
3 min readOct 7, 2024

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Illustration of a Patent Medicine “Nerve and Brain Tablets”  box.
Photo: Picryl, Public Domain

In case you are curious, Miplyffa is a newly FDA-approved medication to treat certain neurological diseases. How do I know that? I subscribe to medical news from Drugs.com.

Am I a physician or a pharmacist? Not even close. However, I have a morbid curiosity about all things, most recently about the bizarre names of drugs.

Medusa, of course, is that Goddess from Greek mythology who, instead of hair, has a slithering nest of snakes on her head. More to the point, anyone who looks at her is turned to stone.

Drug names can do that to me. Take Ebglyss (lebrikizumab-lbkz) and Otulfi (ustekinumab-aauz). The first name is a proprietary, or brand name, and is capitalized. The second, usually in parentheses and lowercase, is its generic name. A drug can have more than one brand name but, to avoid confusion or mistakes, only one generic name.

Who determines this? Ah, therein lies the rub. Generic names have one process and brand names have another. It makes sense. If you are taking Advil (a brand name) and going abroad, you may have trouble finding it — unless you know (or read on the label) its generic name, ibuprofen. There are — and I did the research — more than 150 different brands of ibuprofen in use worldwide.

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Ronald C. Flores-Gunkle
Crow’s Feet

A lapsed humanist currently doubting that there is hope for humankind. Yet, as the poet once wrote, “Hope is the thing with feathers.”