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.