Talk:Mercaptopurine

Article contains no history of the drug (date of discovery, start of use, etc.) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.244.38.2 (talk) 05:44, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Editing?

Editing suggested

• At present the entry for Azathioprine, which is the pro-drug of Mercaptopurine, is being edited, and it would be a good idea to ensure the 2 drug entries are reasonably coherent, as they have very little difference in action. The section on adverse effects here is quite good compared to Azathioprine - it emphasises the signs that patients may see if they react to Mercaptopurine. Wikipedia is probably used by patients on drugs as as alternative source of medical advice on side effects, rightly or wrongly, so it is important to get the embedded advice right.
• The sentence; "every woman in the mercaptopurine arm of the study had fetal cardiac activity at follow-up (two weeks later) and was given a suction abortion" seems unnecessary and may be offensive to some readers, and could be deleted without affecting the information.

   - Jad 10 Sep 12  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.27.62.92 (talk) 23:46, 9 September 2012 (UTC) 

• The two structure diagrams appear to be laid out in opposite directions, and after that, seem still not to agree.

ArthurDent006.5 (talk) 07:37, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

Mercapto or Thio?

The structural diagrams show the sulfur on its own, which I think should be thiopurine (ala thioguanine) mercaptopurine would have an -SH on it instead, right? (IANA Chemist)

Riventree (talk) 18:24, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

"Mercaptopurine" is the international nonproprietary name which is unrelated to any method of systematic chemical nomenclature. However, "mercaptopurine" is not an implausible systematic name because one of the tautomers of this chemical involves purine substituted with a -SH group, as shown in this image: File:Mercaptopurine.jpg -- Ed (Edgar181) 18:53, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

Ed, Thank you. You are THE MAN. Is there a wikipedia chemistry convention regarding images and tautomers? It seems to me that having the names and diagrammed (and rendered) structures agree. I remember a similar case where the crystal diagram didn't show bonds indicated in the molecule itself. Of course it's asking a large amount of the people providing visual representations, and we don't want to raise the bar so high that people cease contributing...

Riventree (talk) 23:16, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

In general, I think chemical structures are best depicted as their most common tautomer. I'm not sure which one that would be in this case. -- Ed (Edgar181) 11:29, 27 May 2017 (UTC)