Since the rheumatic diseases are among the most prevalent of conditions,
the anti-rheumatic drugs make up one of the largest groups of drugs
prescribed. They vary from the non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs
through to the complex imrnunomodulators. There are significant
differences between these groups of drugs as regards their mechanism of
action and within each spectrum of adverse reactions, yet there is also
some overlap. class there are also subtle individual differences between
the drugs despite a sharing of the basic mechanisms of action and range
of side effects. It is this individual variation and, in particular, the
individual reaction of the patient to the drug that we attempted to
address at this symposium. The first symposium on Individual Variation
in Response to Non- Steroidal Anti-inflammatory Drugs was held at Leura,
New South Wales, Australia as a satellite symposium to the XVI
International Congress of Rheumatology in August, 1985. Following a
successful meeting, proceedings of which were published in a supplement
to Agents and Actions (Suppl. 17, 1986), it was decided to organise a
second symposium as a satellite meeting of the International Congressof
Pharmacology Meeting in Sydney, August, 1987. The meeting was held at
the Manly Pacific and focused on variability in response to
anti-rheumatic drugs in general rather than just concentrating on the
non-steroidal drugs.