I mean, Ozempic is still very much a diabetic drug, its just that its gained popularity, far and away, beyond diabetics for its weight loss properties in everyone.
Warfarin (Coumadin) is used as a blood thinner, but was created as rat poison
Latisse was originally developed to treat glaucoma but the doctors noticed the patient’s eyelashes were becoming bolder and darker so they repackaged it as a cosmetic prescription drug to lessen people’s dependence on mascara 😁
Minoxidil started as a heart medication
I dunno that those are opposites.
Tbh, I don’t think there’s really any examples of the idea, not that would hold up as a science answer.
Not to say that there aren’t plenty of medicines that ended up pretty far away from what the original research was towards, and there’s a perfect example with minoxidil imo. But I can’t call it an opposite in any but the most abstract way.
Mind you, if some of the hints about it being a viable component of treatment for ovarian cancer end up panning out, id have to shrug and smile if someone called that opposite lol.
But, yeah, finding unintended uses for drugs is super common, it’s just that the underlying reason it ends up working isn’t really an opposite, just unexpected. People have already given great answers for that side of things, and I can’t improve on them tbh.
Dynamite TNT. In 1863 Julius Wilbrand synthesized trinitrotoluene (TNT) while experimenting with new yellow dyes for the textile industry.
And I was just now years old when I learned that TNT is not dynamite:
Dynamite wasn’t exactly an accident, but a deliberate invention by Alfred Nobel, born from a tragic accident: his nitroglycerin factory exploded, killing his brother. This spurred Nobel to tame the volatile liquid; he discovered that mixing nitroglycerin with an absorbent material like diatomaceous earth (kieselguhr) created a stable, putty-like paste that could be formed into sticks, making it safe to transport and detonate controllably with a blasting cap, a discovery patented in 1867.
So TNT is the stable trinitrotoluene while dynamite is the less stable nitroglycerin.
Wasn’t ozempic also indicated for alcohol addiction? I know that amphetamine and related compounds are indicated for weight loss and attention deficit. Seems like whenever we create a psychoactive drug it is a blunt instrument that has multiple side effects.
