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. 2003 Dec 22;141(2):195–196. doi: 10.1038/sj.bjp.0705608

Figure 1.

Figure 1

Chemical structures of (a) anandamide and (b) oleamide. The simplest nomenclature of these compounds is to annotate the length of the acyl chain and the number of bonds together with a note as to whether the compound is an amide or an ethanolamide. Thus, anandamide is C20:4 ethanolamide and oleamide is C18:1 amide. Other related endogenous compounds with biological activity include palmitoylethanolamide (C16:0 ethanolamide), stearoylethanolamide (C18:0 ethanolamide), oleoylethanolamide (C18:1 ethanolamide) and erucamide (C22:1 amide) (see Bezuglov et al, 1998).