Persson - Böcker

Epidemiological studies of Chronic Bronchitis/ Chronic Obstructive Airway Disease (CB/COAD) have demonstrated that hypersecretory glandular activity, as weIl as infections, are not the most important risk factors determining the serious decline in lung function in this disease. Instead, inflammatory indices are emerging as characteristic features of the pathology and pathophysiology of CB/COAD. It is possible that continuous inflammatory processes cause structural changes and thus provide the anatomical basis for airway obstruction which, once estab­ lished, is only partly reversible. We feIt it was timely to gather leading international researchers who could provide critical updates on CB/COAD, its pathology and clinical/ experimental assessments. The latter aspect included not only the fundamentals of airway function but also, and in greater detail, cellular and solute indices which can now be used to determine inflammation in CB/COAD. The meeting was made possible by a grant from Draco/Astra (Sweden and Finland). We particularly acknowledge the expert assistance of Mrs. Eva Engberg in all facets of the present work.

The last twenty years have witnessed enormous efforts by the pharmaceutical industry in the search for new drugs for the treatment of asthma. During this time, as a result of the efforts of asthma researchers in many disciplines, there has been an unprecedented increase in our knowledge about asthma as a disease and about the pharmacology of the existing anti-asthma drugs. This increase in knowledge should have generated information from which directions for future anti-asthma drug research and development might be predicted. Thus, we felt it was timely to invite a group of leading international pharmacologists to meet together on the occasion of the Xth International Congress of Pharmacology, being held for the first time in Australia (in Sydney August 23- 28th, 1987), for a satellite meeting to discuss the topic "New drugs for asthma". The proceedings of this small workshop are presented in this book. The meeting was unique in that leading pharmacologists from most of the pharmaceutical companies involved in the development of anti-asthma drugs were present. All participants, whether from the industry or from academia, were active researchers involved in providing the animal data and in carrying out human pharmacological studies, on new anti­ asthma drugs. Although the proceedings have been subtitled into "symptomatic" and "prophylactic" anti-asthma drugs for the purposes of presentation, this is not meant to pinpoint the idea that we believe such clear cut differences necessarily exist. In fact, they may not exist.