ursodeoxycholic acid

Meanings

1. A bile acid, C₂₄H₄₀O₄, present in human bile at low concentrations and used as a medication for the treatment of various biliary and liver diseases.

Etymology

Calque of German Ursodesoxycholsäure; equivalent to Latin urs(us) (“bear”) + deoxycholic acid. In 1901–1902, Swedish biochemist Olof Hammarsten isolated an unknown bile acid from polar bear bile at Uppsala University, naming it Ursocholeinsäure (in German) in a two-part paper in Hoppe-Seyler's Zeitschrift für Physiologische Chemie. In 1927, Japanese researcher Masato Shoda crystallized the compound from a commercial preparation of Asian black bear bile and found it to be an isomer of deoxycholic acid, renaming it Ursodesoxycholsäure (in German) in a paper in The Journal of Biochemistry.