Free pharmacy material Prostaglandins INTRODUCTION Prostaglandins were first discovered and isolated from human semen in the 1930s by Ulf von Euler of Sweden. Thinking they had come from the prostate gland, he named them prostaglandins. It has since been determined that they exist and are synthesised in virtually every cell of the body. Prostaglandins are like hormones in that they act as chemical messengers, but they do not move to other sites—they work right within the cells where they are synthesised. The name ‘prostaglandin’ derives from the prostate gland. When prostaglandin was first isolated from seminal fluid in 1935 by the Swedish physiologist Ulf von Euler, and independently by M.W. Goldblatt, it was believed to be part of the prostatic secretions (in actuality, prostaglandins are produced by the seminal vesicles); it was later shown that many other tissues secrete prostaglandins for various functions. Prostaglandins are unsaturated carboxyl...
