Some biochemical and pharmacological properties of anti-inflammatory drugs.

Abstract

Research devoted to anti-inflammatory drugs appears to have acquired a new status recently. It is now at last a fit subject for scientific meetings and discussions, even reviews! This field of drug reserach is still comparatively in the dark ages despite its distinguished antecedents in some of the most outstanding chemical research ever conducted, making hydrocortisone and its analogues widely available [296], or its own long history going back for example to the introduction of salicin for the treatment of acute rheumatism by Maclagan in England during the years 1874 to 1876—followed almost immediately by the introduction of salicylic acid for this purpose by Stricker and Riess in Germany in 1876 [48]. Ninety years after Maclagan’s important contribution (which is a very long period of ignorance in this age of scientific enlightenment), although we are familiar with a considerable range of other and more potent anti-inflammatory and antirheumatic drugs, we still do not yet know with any certainty why salicylates, or indeed any of these present day drugs, should manifest the effects they do. Even more lacking is a clear rationale for the design of the superior anti-inflammatory or antirheumatic drugs of the future.