Pharmaceutical Chemistry of Antihypertensive Agents [antikvár]

PREFACE Even a superficial glance at books published under such titles as "Pharmaceutical Chemistry" or "Medicinal Chemistry" is enough to demonstrate the basic differences that can be found in the editorial concepts and contents of these books. Extreme cases are frequently encountered, e.g., the appearance of a "Pharmaceutical Chemistry" with an editorial concept predominated by either analytical or organic synthetic chemistry. Besides books of this nature, there exists an even more extreme type of "Pharmaceutical (Medicinal) Chemistry" in which chemistry seems to be pushed entirely into the background, and the pharmacologically, pharmacokinetically, and therapeutically related aspects play the dominant role. In view of these fundamental differences in editorial conceptions of pharmaceutical chemistry, it seems reasonable to raise the question as to what the term "pharmaceutical chemistry" should be intended to cover. The authors of the present book answer this by giving two equivalences: Pharmaceutical chemistry = Chemistry of pharmaceutical products = Chemistry for pharmacists. In both cases, pharmaceutical chemistry has to provide chemical knowledge to the experts (pharmacists, chemists, biologists, physicians) engaged in the different spheres of pharmacy (synthesis, pharmaceutical technology, quality control of drugs, biopharmacy, etc.), and hence pharmaceutical chemistry is to be regarded as a discipline with complex interdisciplinary features. This complexity is mirrored in this book. Besides the antihypertensive agents par excellence, the book discusses the group of diuretics used either in combination with antihypertensives, or alone in hypertensive therapy. The close relationship elucidated between the actions of important antihypertensive agents and their interactions with the hormones and enzymes of the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system have led to the inclusion of a chapter summarizing the pharmaceutical chemistry of these bioregulator substances. On the other hand, certain groups of agents having additional therapeutic indications other than antihypertension had to be excluded from this volume, and will receive a detailed treatment in a later volume in this series. The chemical orientation of the book is to be observed in the articles on the individual compounds, but the insertion of a short introductory chapter on the physiological and pharmacological basis of blood pressure regulation also seemed reasonable. An appreciable amount of attention is paid to the topics of structure-activity relationship (SAR) and analysis. Through the parts on SAR, the reader can get a historical view of the discovery of the compounds and the trends in further development in that particular field of drug research. This overview tends to generate new ides for SAR research too. The analytical sections of the chapters treat pharmaceutical analysis in a broad sense: besides the quality control of drugs, their detection and assay in biological media are also included. In this complex treatment of the subject, the metabolites of the drug compounds are listed, and their analytical detection is also discussed. Similarly, not only the parameters of drug stability are included, which are important in pharmaceutical technology and biopharmacy, but also analytical methods indicating the stability. The list of references includes all the basic and significant papers published up to 1987—88. Budapest, 1989 György Szász Zsuzsanna Budvári-Bárány