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.
