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

DNP is 2,4-dinitrophenol.

DNP causes  disruption of energy generation in cells. Normally, the energy required for driving the multitude of processes that occur in cells comes from the oxidation of food (fat and carbohydrate). In the presence of DNP, fat and carbohydrate in food are broken down but production of useful energy for cells is impaired and is instead released as heat. As a result, body reserves of fat and carbohydrate are mobilised and weight is lost.

high dose of DNP causes a lot of breakdown of fat and carbohydrate, but the energy released is converting into ATP, so at the same time body is suffering from absence of energy and organs ceases to perform their normal function. also increasing body temperature will lead to failure of organs. which result in death of person.

DNP used for antiseptic, pestiside and herbicedes. It has same mechanism of action, it stops fromation of ATP, which active of energy which can be utilised by organisms. so it kill whoever take it in excess amout. It also used as intermediat in the production of sulfer dyes.

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