Clinical pharmacology comprises all aspects of the scientific study of drugs in man. Its objective is to optimise drug therapy and it is justified in so far as it is of practical use. Over recent years pharmacology has undergone great expansion resulting from technology that allows the understanding of molecular action and the capacity to exploit this. The potential consequences for therapeutics are enormous. All cellular mechanisms (normal and pathological), in their immense complexity are, in principle, identifiable. What seems almost an infinity of substances, transmitters, local hormones, cell growth factors, can be made, modified and tested to provide agonists,. | SECTION I Clinical pharmacology SYNOPSIS Clinical pharmacology comprises all aspects of the scientific study of drugs in man. Its objective is to optimise drug therapy and it is justified in so far as it is of practical use. Over recent years pharmacology has undergone great expansion resulting from technology that allows the understanding of molecular action and the capacity to exploit this. The potential consequences for therapeutics are enormous. All cellular mechanisms normal and pathological in their immense complexity are in principle identifiable. What seems almost an infinity of substances transmitters local hormones cell growth factors can be made modified and tested to provide agonists partial agonists inverse agonists and antagonists. And interference with genetic disease processes is now possible. Increasingly large numbers of substances will deserve to be investigated in therapeutics and used for altering physiology to the perceived advantage real or imagined of humans. But with all these developments and their potential for good comes capacity for harm whether inherent in the substances or as a result of human misapplication. Successful use of the power conferred by biotechnology in particular requires understanding of the enormous complexity of the consequences of interference. Willingness to learn the principles of pharmacology and how to apply them in individual circumstances of infinite variety is vital to success without harm to maximise benefit and minimise risk. All these issues are the concern of clinical pharmacologists and are the subject of this book. The drug and information explosion of the past six decades combined with medical need has called into being the discipline clinical pharmacology. The discipline is now recognised as both a health care and an academic specialty indeed no medical school can now be considered complete without a department or subdepartment of Clinical Pharmacology. The clinical pharmacologist s role is to provide
