Digestive / VISUAL EXPLAINER
What Does Your Liver Do with Medicines?
Liver enzymes chemically change many medicines. Products may be inactive or remain active, and some medicines become active through metabolism. Changing a molecule is different from removing it from the body.
READ THE IMAGE
What the illustration shows
English navy-and-gold poster titled “What Does Your Liver Do with Medicines?” A blue torso locator highlights a liver on the viewer’s left. A magnified peach liver cell shows a blue symbolic medicine molecule, a gold enzyme, and a differently shaped blue-and-white product linked by arrows. Leaders identify the liver, liver cell, molecule, enzyme and changed molecule. Lower left, symbolic alternatives are labeled inactive molecule and still active molecule or activated. Lower right distinguishes metabolism, which changes molecules, from excretion, which removes substances. Text states that routes vary, with urine and bile as examples, and other tissues also contain drug-metabolizing enzymes. Symbols, sizes and branching are illustrative, not actual molecular structures or outcome proportions. Gold AllHumanBody.com and the complete slogan appear at the bottom.
How to interpret this poster
- No named medicine, dose, interaction or personal treatment guidance. Symbols are not chemical structures; not every drug uses the same pathway or exit route.
- AI-assisted educational illustration; not physician certification, microscopy, a diagnosis or individualized medical advice.
- Fine annotations need enlargement; the full description provides an accessible text alternative.
- Display the full uncropped illustration; do not trim titles, legends or boundary annotations.
AI-assisted educational illustration, adapted into web-sized images without changing its composition. This is general education, not an individual diagnosis or treatment recommendation.
EVIDENCE / CONTEXT
Sources and what they support
- Merck clinical pharmacology teaching ↗
Hepatic enzyme metabolism, active metabolites/prodrugs and transport/elimination distinction.