Lung Biology in Health and Disease Volume 234 Pharmacology and Therapeutics of Airway Disease PDF

Preface

Since the publication of the first edition, there have been many significant advances in the pharmacology and therapeutics of the respiratory tract. This has been evident by the introduction of a number of new entities in the treatment of many respiratory tract diseases. In parallel, there have been advances in the assessment and evaluation of new drugs, and in understanding of the pathophysiology of respiratory tract diseases and of the methods of measuring airway and clinical responses such that potential targets for therapy have been identified and are being investigated, together with new therapeutic uses of already-available drugs.

Airway diseases comprise asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), which cause much chronic respiratory disability and death in the world. They are characterized by intermittent and/or chronic airflow obstruction, which in severe asthma and COPD can be poorly responsive to available treatments. The morbidity and mortality caused by these diseases are increasing, in particular COPD, which is now the sixth most common cause of death worldwide but predicted to become the third commonest cause within the next 10 years. There is therefore a pressing need to obtain even more effective treatments than that we currently have.

This volume is addressed to the respiratory physician, respiratory investigators, and respiratory allied professions. It not only provides the concepts upon which many treatments are used for these conditions, but also emphasizes the way in which these treatments work, and how new treatments can be discovered and tested in different patient groups. The book focuses on the state-of-the-art pharmacologic and therapeutic approaches in controlling pathophysiological processes in the airways, and reviews normal and abnormal physiologic, biochemical, and molecular aspects of the respiratory tract. It explores the basic mechanisms of inflammatory cell activation and pathophysiology in disease, and therapeutic ways of controlling inflammation, ways of reversing or preventing airflow obstruction, and symptomatic treatments for advanced disease.

We hope that this volume will be useful to those who deal with the many patients who suffer from airway disease. We would like to thank all the contributors to this volume and the editors at Informa Healthcare for their encouragement and help during the inception of this book.