Medicine & BodyGreek → English
Erythropoietin
/ɪˌrɪθroʊˈpɔɪətɪn/noun
A hormone released by the kidneys that drives the marrow to produce red blood cells.
The Greek roots
ἐρυθρός
erythrós
red
ποιεῖν
poieîn
to make, produce
Literally: “red-maker”
The story of the word
Two Finnish physiologists, Eva Bonsdorff and Eeva Jalavisto, named the substance in 1948, long before anyone could purify it. The second root is the same ποιεῖν that gives poetry its name, so a poet and this hormone are both, literally, makers. Recombinant versions reached the clinic in the late 1980s for kidney patients and were in professional cycling within a few years.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → medical coinage → English
- First recorded
- 1948
Same family
erythrocytepoetryhaematopoiesiserythema
In a sentence
Dialysis patients are given erythropoietin because their kidneys no longer make enough of it.
The team doctor was banned for supplying erythropoietin.