By 1950 the work led to the knowledge that ethanol is oxidized to acetaldehyde by alcohol dehydrogenase and acetaldehyde is oxidized to acetic acid by aldehyde dehydrogenase (ALDH), and that disulfiram works by inhibiting ALDH, leading to a buildup of acetaldehyde, which is what causes the negative effects in the body.The drug was first marketed in Denmark and as of 2008, Denmark is the country where it is most widely prescribed. It was approved by the FDA in 1951. The FDA later approved other drugs for treatment of alcoholism, namely naltrexone in 1994 and acamprosate in 2004. Society and culture
Though the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) in the US has not set a permissible exposure limit (PEL) for disulfiram in the workplace, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health has set a recommended exposure limit (REL) of 2 mg/m3 and recommended that workers avoid concurrent exposure to ethylene dibromide. Research
Disulfiram has been studied as a possible treatment for cancer, parasitic infections, anxiety disorder, and latent HIV infection.Disulfiram has shown reversing of retinitis pigmentosa in rats. Cancer
When disulfiram creates complexes with metals (dithiocarbamate complexes), it is a proteasome inhibitor and as of 2016 it had been studied in in vitro experiments, model animals, and small clinical  trials as a possible treatment for liver metastasis, metastatic melanoma, glioblastoma, non-small cell lung cancer, and prostate cancer. Various clinical trials of copper depletion agents have been carried out.
The company had a group of enthusiastic self-experimenters that called itself the "Death Battalion", and in the course of testing the drug on themselves, accidentally discovered that drinking alcohol while the drug was still in their bodies  made them mildly sick. : 98–105 They made that discovery in 1945, and did nothing with it until two years later, when Jacobsen gave an impromptu talk and mentioned that work, which was discussed afterwards in newspapers at the time, leading them to further explore the use of the drug for that purpose. : 98–105  That work included small clinical trials with Oluf Martensen-Larsen, a doctor who worked with alcoholics. They published their work starting in 1948.The chemists at Medicinalco discovered a new form of disulfiram while trying to purify a batch that had been contaminated with copper. This form turned out to have better pharmacological properties, and the company patented it and used that form for the product that was introduced as Antabus (later anglicized to Antabuse).This work led to renewed study of the human metabolism of ethanol. It was already known that ethanol was mostly metabolized in the liver, with it being converted first to acetaldehyde and then acetaldehyde to acetic acid and carbon dioxide, but the enzymes involved were not known.