An<unk>  (INN) is an official generic and<unk> <unk>  given to a pharmaceutical drug or an active ingredient. INNs are intended to make communication more precise by providing a unique standard<unk>  for each active ingredient, to avoid prescribing errors. The INN system has been coordinated by the World Health Organization (WHO) since 1953. Having unambiguous standard<unk> s for each drug (standardization of drug nomenclature) is important because a drug may be sold by many different brand<unk> s, or a branded medication may contain more than one drug. For example, the branded medications Celexa, Celapram and Citrol all contain the same active ingredient: citalopram; and the antibiotic widely known by the brand<unk>  Bactrim contains two active ingredients: trimethoprim and sulfamethoxazole. This combination of two antibiotic agents in one tablet has been available as a generic for decades, but the brand<unk> s Bactrim and Septra are still in common use. Each drug's INN is unique but may contain a word stem that is shared with other drugs of the same class; for example, the beta blocker drugs propranolol and atenolol share the -olol suffix, and the benzodiazepine drugs lorazepam and diazepam share the -azepam suffix. The WHO issues INNs in English, Latin, French, Russian, Spanish, Arabic, and Chinese, and a drug's INNs are often cognate across most or all of the languages, with minor spelling or pronunciation differences, for example: paracetamol (en) (la), (fr) and (ru). An established INN is known as a recommended INN (rINN), while a<unk>  that is still being considered is called a proposed INN (pINN).
International nonproprietary name
Designer drug
New chemical entity
Hazardous waste
Me-too drug
Proprietary drug
Generic drug
Unused drug