One day during winter break, Mary was talking with her grandmother. While remini

Question

One day during winter break, Mary was talking with her grandmother. While reminiscing about her college years in the 1930s, the grandmother recalled a sad memory. When she was a junior in college, she had a good friend named Barbara who became very sick and died during the spring semester.

            Like many young women, Barbara had been preoccupied with her weight. She was planning to work as a model the following summer and wanted to lose weight before then. A new miracle diet pill had just come on the market, and Barbara began taking it. Figuring that more was better, she took more than the recommended dose of pills. Before long, Barbara began experiencing blurry vision and a constant high fever that she couldn’t shake. Barbara eventually died, and her death was ultimately blamed on the diet pills. The pills were later taken off the market because they caused cataracts and sometimes death in many people.

            Mary asked her grandmother why the pills made people die, but her grandmother didn’t know. All she remembered was that they were called Dinistriso and had something called DNP in them.

            Help Mary figure out why these diet pills were killing people. What is DNP, and why was it in a diet pill? Why did it cause the symptoms that Barbara was experiencing, and why did it eventually kill her? What is DNP (legally) used for today? Why does it work for that purpose?

Explanation / Answer

These diet pills contains DNP which decreases ATP production or energy production by collapsing the proton motive force in the mitochondria of cell and as a result increase the metabolic rate in order to compensate the insufficiency and to meet energy production. Due to uncoupling of oxidative phosphorylation which is caused due to leak of proton (hydrogen ion responsible to produce ATP), across the inner mitochondrial membrane and thus bypss ATP synthase. This prevents ATP production and as a result body heat is produced due to uncoupling of oxidative phosphorylation. As the metabolic rate increases it causes irregular heart beat and irregular breathing which may lead to death.

DNP is known as 2,4-Dinitrophenol is an organic compound is used as an antiseptic and non selective bioaccumulating pesticides.

This is used in diet pill to greatly increase the basal metabolic rate of the body.

The symptoms of losing weight, fever and blurred vision are due to intake of DNP which rises the body temperature and causes rise in metabolic rate to decrease weight due to uncoupling of oxidative phosphorylation. The blurred vision is due to formation of cataract.

When the dose increase beyond its limits in the body it effects on central nervous system and cardiovascular system which causes irregular heart rate, irregular breathing and mitochondrial dysfunction due to increase in metabolic rate and thus may cause death.

DNP is used for antiseptic, non selective bioaccumulating pesticides, production of sulphur dyes, wood preservatives, photographic developing and to made explosives.

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