Progress In Drug Research 50 1998

Progress in Drug Research is a prestigious book series which provides extensive expert-written reviews on a wide spectrum of highly topical areas in current pharmaceutical and pharmacological research. It serves as an important source of information for researchers concerned with drug research and all those who need to keep abreast of the many recent developments in the quest for new and better medicines.

Hypertension is one of the cardiovascular diseases which is most common throughout the world. It is generally defined as an elevation of systolic and/or diastolic arterial blood pressure, which is 120/80 mm Hg in normal situation. A value of 140/90 mm is generally accepted as the upper limit of normotension. Hypertension with certain risk factors such as hypercholes terolemia, diabetes, smoking and a family history of vascular disease pre disposes to arteriosclerosis and consequent cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. The treatment of hypertension leads to reduced risk of hyperten sive renal failure, haemorrhagic stroke, myocardial infarction and cardiac failure. In most cases, the cause of the hypertension can not be clearly defined. Such hypertension is termed as essential hypertension. In a few cases (5- 15%), the hypertension is secondary to definable causes, such as renal artery stenosis, a pheochromocytoma, or an endocrine disorder. This type of hyper tension is known as secondary hypertenSion. Although the exact etiology of essential hypertension is still not well known, the following factors are sup posed to play causative roles.

Volume 36 of "Progress in Drug Research" contains 5 articles and the various indexes which facilitate its use and establish the connec tion with the previous volumes. While all articles deal with some of the topical aspects of drug research, the contribution by Robert R. Ruffolo et al. on "Drug receptors and control of the cardiovas cular system: Recent advances" is indeed in its own right a mono graphic presentation of this important domain. The remaining four reviews provide an overview of the work in volved in the search for new and better medicines, with a focus on chemical, pharmacological, toxicological, biological, biochemical and molecular modeling studies. In the 31 years this series has existed, the Editor has enjoyed the help and advice of many colleagues. Readers, the authors of the in dividual articles, and, last but not least, the reviewers have all con tributed greatly to the success of PDR. Although many comments received have been favorable, it is nevertheless necessary to analyze and to reconsider the current position and the direction of such a series. So far, it has been the Editor's aim to help spread informa tion on the vast domain of drug research, and to provide the reader with a tool helping him or her to keep abreast of the latest develop ments and trends.

Volume 47 of "Progress in Drug Research" contains eight reviews and the various indexes which facilitate its use and establish the connection with the previous volumes. The articles in this volume deal with inotropic steroids, with chemokines and their involvement in a wide range of inflam matory diseases, with the subclassification and nomenclature of ul- and Uz-adrenoceptors, with Chinese traditional medicine, with drug targets in the molecular pathogenesis of asthma, with cytokines and their therapeutic application in immunosuppression and immunostimulation, with alter native medicine and with the potential use of calcium blockers in psy chiatry. These reviews and the quotations of original articles provide the reader with valuable information on several new developments in the world-wide search for new and better medicines. In 1959, when the Editor started this series of monographs, it was his intention to help disseminate informa tion on the vast and fast growing domain of drug research. Already at that time,it was not possible to follow the major individual publications in this field, and the reader was thereby provided with a tool to keep abreast of the latest developments and trends. This goal remained unchanged over the last 37 years, and I believe that the reviews in PDR are useful to the non-specialist who can obtain an overview of a particular field of drug research in a relatively short time.

Jay A. Glasel: Drugs, the human genome, and individual-based medicine.- Vera M. Kolb: Herbal medicine of Wisconsin Indians.- Paul L. Skatrud: The impact of multiple drug resistance (MDR) proteins on chemotherapy and drug discovery.- John W. Ford, Edward B. Stevens, J. Mark Treherne, Jeremy Packer and Mark Bushfield: Potassium channels: Gene family, therapeutic relevance, high-throughput screening technologies and drug discovery.- David T. Wong and Frank P. Bymaster: Dual serotonin and noradrenaline uptake inhibitor class of antidepressants - Potential for greater efficacy of just hype?.- Satya P. Gupta: Advances in QSAR studies of HIV-1 reverse transcriptase inhibitors.