Extracted from the Drug Abuse Handbook, 2nd edition, to give you just the information you need at an affordable price.

Pharmacokinetics and Pharmacodynamics of Abused Drugs is a concise and focused volume devoted to the metabolism and measurable effects of drugs on the human body. Beginning with basic concepts and models designed to provide a fundamental understanding of the subject matter, the book details the specifics of absorption, distribution, and elimination pathways and rates of commonly abused drugs. It analyzes the effects of drug use on human performance including response time, memory and recall, logical and cognitive processes, as well as physiological changes. Packed with data and comparative studies, this handy volume considers the effects of marketed and prescription medications as well as illicit drugs including opioids, cannabis, cocaine, methamphetamine, MDMA, ketamine, nicotine, and LSD. Containing 29 figures and tables and extensive references, this is a must-have resource for the influence of drug use and abuse on human physiology and performance.

The understanding of the role of dendritic cells (DCs) in immune responses has come a long way since Steinmann and colleagues described these cells in 1972. - tensive research during the intervening period has provided a good understanding of the complexity of the DC system and its pivotal role in immunity. It is also now clearer how different subsets of DCs interact and regulate each other and how DC populations affect the function of other cells of the immune system. The improved understanding of their role in immune response has led to the idea that modulation of DC functions by, for example, pharmacological agents could be used as a pot- tial therapeutic approach in some pathological conditions. The actual applicability and therapeutic potential of all these approaches is yet to be fully demonstrated but nonetheless, animal models of human diseases are proving to be very helpful in the evaluation of manipulated DCs as a new treatment in diseases like cancer, auto- munity or asthma. DCs are integral to the initiation and regulation of immune response (Banchereau et al. 2000). The outcome of antigen presentation by DCs is determined by their maturation status, which can be induced by their interaction with danger signals. To recognise a wide array of pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMP), DCs express a number of pattern recognition receptors (PRR) such as Toll-like rec- tors (TLRs) and C-type lectin receptors (CLR) that recognise structural components of pathogens and discriminate between self and non-self molecules.

Extracted from the Drug Abuse Handbook, 2nd edition, to give you just the information you need at an affordable price. Forensic Issues in Alcohol Testing offers concise and focused information specific to the interests of forensic scientists and clinical and forensic toxicologists. It analyzes the acute effects of alcohol intoxication and the methods by which investigators can measure alcohol concentration in blood, urine, and breath. It considers extenuating circumstances affecting acute impairment by detailing the disposition and fate of alcohol in the body as well as the factors influencing absorption, distribution, and elimination. Specific chapters address difficulties in measuring and interpreting post-mortem alcohol concentrations due to poor quality of specimen, sampling site differences, and post-mortem diffusion or synthesis. Recent advances in biochemical testing make it possible to quantitate chronic alcohol ingestion, and the book analyzes the efficacy of these tests as evaluators of dependence or potential for dependence.

Pharmaceutical scientists in industry and academia will appreciate this single reference for its detailed experimental procedures for conducting biopharmaceutical studies. This well-illustrated guide allows them to establish, validate, and implement commonly used in situ and in vitro model systems. Chapters provide ready access to these methodologies for studies of the intestinal, buccal, nasal and respiratory, vaginal, ocular, and dermal epithelium as well as the endothelial and elimination barriers.

This volume is devoted to descriptions of non medical as well as medical uses for some drugs that have typically, or not so typically, been associated with drug abuse. One major objective of this book is to identify costs and benefits of drug abuse. The book highlights drugs including 3,4 methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA), cannabinoids, opioids and methylphenidate because of their well-documented potential for abuse and provides new and emerging evidence of their potential to treat some chronic disease states alongside the potential consequences of exposure.

Focused more specifically on the recent advances in applications of various metals and their complexes used in biomedicine, particularly in the diagnosis and treatment of chronic diseases. The editors give equal importance to other key aspects such as toxicological issues and safety concerns. The application of metals in the biomedical field is highly interdisciplinary and has a broad appeal across all biomedical specialties. Biomedical Applications of Metals is particularly focused on covering the role of metals in medicine and the development of novel therapeutic products and solutions in the form of alternative medicines, and some topics on Indian traditional medicine i.e., "Ayurveda". In Section I, the book discusses the role of metals in medicines and include chapters on nanoparticles, noble metals, medical devices, copper. selenium, silver, and microbial pathogens; while Section II includes topics on metals toxicity including heavy metals, carcinogens, cancer therapy, Bhasma's and chelating agents used in Ayurveda, and biochemical and molecular targets including actions of metals. These new and emerging concepts of applications of metals in medicine, their crucial role in management of microbial resistance, and their use in the treatment of various chronic diseases is essential information for toxicologists, and clinical and biomedical researchers.

The young investigator with an idea has to negotiate many institutional, federal, and industrial challenges in order to get a product to market. Nowhere is described the steps in the development of new drugs, diagnos tics, or devices; the person with an idea has nowhere to turn for information and details. The young investigator may understand the elements of basic and clinical research, but ordinarily has no insight into novel ways of finding research funding or how to explore to find the funding opportunities that are available. The young investigator has little knowledge of the mecha nisms to bring an idea through the developmental phases to the market. There are other players in this complex endeavor with whom he or she has no contact, including those from industry, the Food and Drug Administration, and the legal community. Exposure to the philosophy of product develop ment and to procedural information would be useful to the scientific com munity, as would contact with those who have successfully taken an idea to a finished product. A first attempt to do this was the symposium on Idea to Product: The Process, sponsored by Serono Symposia USA and held No vember 17 to 20, 1994, in Washington, D.C. This book comprises the pro ceedings of that meeting. The editors are indebted to the many contributors to this volume, and we are especially grateful to Serono Symposia USA and to Leslie Nies and her staff for their expertise in organizing the symposium."

The clinical microbiology laboratory is often a sentinel for the detection of drug resistant strains of microorganisms. Standardized protocols require continual scrutiny to detect emerging phenotypic resistance patterns. The timely notification of clinicians with susceptibility results can initiate the alteration of antimicrobial chemotherapy and improve patient care. It is vital that microbiology laboratories stay current with standard and emerging methods and have a solid understanding of their function in the war on infectious diseases. Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing Protocols clearly defines the role of the clinical microbiology laboratory in integrated patient care and provides a comprehensive, up-to-date procedural manual that can be used by a wide variety of laboratorians. The authors provide a comprehensive, up-to-date procedural manual including protocols for bioassay methods and molecular methods for bacterial strain typing. Divided into three sections, the text begins by introducing basic susceptibility disciplines including disk diffusion, macro and microbroth dilution, agar dilution, and the gradient method. It covers step-by-step protocols with an emphasis on optimizing the detection of resistant microorganisms. The second section describes specialized susceptibility protocols such as surveillance procedures for detection of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, serum bactericidal assays, time-kill curves, population analysis, and synergy testing. The final section is designed to be used as a reference resource. Chapters cover antibiotic development; design and use of an antibiogram; and the interactions of the clinical microbiology laboratory with the hospital pharmacy, and infectious disease and control. Unique in its scope, Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing Protocols gives laboratory personnel an integrated resource for updated lab-based techniques and charts within the contextual role of clinical microbiology in modern medicine.

During the past fifty years, thousands of natural products have been isolated from plants, fungi, and bacteria. Apart from intense searches by pharmaceutical companies for medicinals and the concentrated effort mounted by the National Cancer Institute, many of these have not been tested in biological systems. The major reasons for this appear to be, at least, twofold. First, individual researchers looking for biologically active natural products will often isolate only small amounts of material sufficient to determine a structure and calculate the specific activity for their particular bioassay systems: insufficient funds preclude re-isolating the compound unless industrial potential is foreseen. Second, the difficulty with which original structures were proved prior to 1972. This required the isolation of relatively large quantities of a natural product and there followed extensive degradation, elemental analyses of the parent and its fragments, then synthesis, piece by piece, of the molecule. All this took time and energy. No wonder that when the structure was proved the chemist was enervated. And coupled to this was the fact that many chemists were not trained to test their materials in biological systems. In contrast, today a natural product can be isolated, its mass and molecular formula determined and, if there is some serendipity, crystals may be obtained for single crystal x-ray analysis. If conditions are near perfect, it is possible to isolate and identify a novel compound in a month.

This volume thoroughly covers HIV-1 antiretrovirals currently in clinical use, together with their advantages and limitations. HIV-1 inhibitor resistance is discussed in detail, and critical assessments as to what will be required of future antiretrovirals in order to halt viral replication, reduce viral resistance, and alter the state of viral latency are presented. Experts at the forefront of HIV-1 research provide overviews of approaches from the fields of virology, chemical biology and structural biology for obtaining small molecule inhibitors that target viral regulatory and structural components at multiple points in the viral lifecycle. The individual chapters will appeal to scientists and clinicians alike.

Volume eight brings up to date several areas important to physicians who care for people with addictive disorders. It deals with the topic of combined alcohol and other drug dependences, and includes chapters on definition of the dependence syndrome, social deviancy and alcohol dependence, and biolo

Since the second edition of "Listeria, Listeriosis, and Food Safety"was published in 1999, the United States has seen a 40 percent decline in the incidence of listeriosis, with the current annual rate of illness rapidly approaching the 2010 target of 2.5 cases per million. Research on this food-borne pathogen, however, has continued unabated, concentrating in the last five years on establishing risk assessments to focus limited financial resources on certain high-risk foods.

Listeria, Listeriosis, and Food Safety, Third Edition summarizes much of the newly published literature and integrates this information with earlier knowledge to present readers with a complete and current overview of foodborne listeriosis. Two completely new chapters have been added to this third edition. The first deals with risk assessment, cost of foodborne listeriosis outbreaks, and regulatory control of the Listeria problem in various countries. The second identifies specific data gaps and directions for future research efforts.

All of the chapters from the second edition have been revised, many by new authors, to include updated information on listeriosis in animals and humans, pathogenesis and characteristics of "Listeria monocytogenes," methods of detection, and subtyping. The text covers the incidence and behavior of "Listeria monocytogenes" in many high-risk foods including, fermented and unfermented dairy products, meat, poultry, and egg products, fish and seafood products, and products of plant origin.

Upholding the standard of the first two editions, Listeria, Listeriosis, and Food Safety, Third Edition provides the most current information to food scientists, microbiologists, researchers, andpublic health practitioners.

Primary care clinicians are called on to care for adolescents in a time with increasing pharmacologic agents that are available in the management of these patients. The emphasis in this book is on the current pharmacologic treatment of common medical disorders in adolescents. Selected topics of practical relevance in adolescent medicine are covered. The goal of this book is to provide a succinct and practical guide specifically written for practicing physicians and allied health professionals who work with adolescents.

This first comprehensive treatment of the subject for more than a decade includes the latest research on nanoparticle toxicology. The practical handbook addresses all areas where toxic mixtures are encountered, from environmental via occupational to medical settings, giving special consideration to air and water, and to the specific requirements for study design in mixture toxicology. While no extensive prior knowledge or toxicological experience is required, the practice-oriented case studies and examples in the second part make this the ideal companion for the professional toxicologist in industry or healthcare institutions with little time for academic study.

Recent analyses of drug attrition rates reveal that a significant number of drug candidates fail in the later stage of clinical development owing to absorption, distribution, metabolism, elimination (ADME), and toxicity issues. Lead optimization in drug discovery, a process attempting to uncover and correct these defects of drug candidates, is highly beneficial in lowering the cost and time to develop therapeutic drugs by reducing drug candidate failures in development. At present, parallel synthesis combining with high-throughput screening has made it easier to generate highly potent compounds (i. e. , hits). However, to be a potential drug, a hit must have drug-like characteristics in addition to potency, which include optimal physicochemical properties, reasonable ph- macokinetic parameters, and good safety profiles. Therefore, research tools must be available in drug discovery to rapidly screen for compounds with favorable drug-like properties, and thus adequate resources can be directed to projects with high potential. Optimization in Drug Discovery: In Vitro Methods is a compilation of detailed experimental protocols necessary for setting up a variety of assays important in compound evaluation. A total of 25 chapters, contributed by many experts in their research areas, cover a wide spectrum of subjects including physicochemical properties, abso- tion, plasma binding, metabolism, drug interactions, and toxicity. A good pharmacokinetic profile has long been recognized as an imp- tant drug-like characteristic. Pharmacokinetic parameters are affected by many properties of drug molecules such as physicochemical nature, abso- tion, metabolic stability, and so on.

Tamoxifen has persisted as a widely accepted and administered drug for almost 25 years. Following the many scientific papers and books on the subject, it has remained a very intriguing substance. This, perhaps, is the reason for another monograph on Tamoxifen. It is regrettably true that overviews, even when up to date after exhaustive research - the shibboleth of our cultures -, rapidly lose relevance with the passage of time. Scientists can sometimes be pictured as deep sea divers, who plunge into the unknown in search of a hitherto unknown world. Their descent is exciting, but eventually they must come up for air and integrate their experiences with others who also had to resurface. This book intends to collect and, where possible, to collate recent, but sometimes seemingly unrelated information. To quote Stephane Mallarme: "Everything in the world exists to end up in a book." Even if this is a tad cynical, it might not be far from the truth. If a little knowledge is a dangerous commodity, one can also add - tongue in cheek - that a vast amount of knowledge can be truly hazardous. It is likely that what might seem as entangled data is confusing, especially for those satisfied with the comfortable interpretation of Tamoxifen as an antiestrogen which has long been found insufficient. The complexity of its mechanisms and effects defies simple explanations and may even seem capricious, but only because of our ignorance.

In 2000 OpdenKamp Registration & Notification organized a two-day symposium in The Hague, The Netherlands, on The Practical Applicability of Toxicokinetic Models in the Risk Assessment of Chemicals'. Several speakers from Europe and the United States were invited to present the different aspects. A vast range of areas was discussed in relation to toxicological modeling and risk assessment, such as occupational toxicology and biomonitoring, exposure to organic solvents and crop protection products, dose-response relations in carcinogenicity, regulatory toxicology, estimation of dermal penetration, uptake and disposition of organic chemicals in fish, the possibilities of in vitro methods in hazard and risk assessment, and the extrapolation between animal and human species. Based on their presentations, the speakers prepared comprehensive papers for this symposium book, reflecting the state of the art of modeling and toxicological risk assessment at the beginning of the third millennium.

Research into the processes of tolerance and sensitization has escalated at a substantial rate in recent years, presumably because of the fundamental importance of understanding the long-term, as opposed simply to the initial, acute effects of drugs. The rapid of such research in recent years is documented c1early by growth the editors in the introductory chapter to this text. However, despite the fact that there is a very large amount of literature concemed with the effects of long-term drug treatment, there is, to the best of our knowledge, no published text that has ever attempted to integrate some of the many diverse findings that have been made in this area. Basic research has uncovered a num ber of different mechanisms by which tolerance and sensitization to drugs can develop. Such mechanisms are of very different types, involving psychological behavioral, metabolic, neuronal, and subcellular processes. Because of the complexity of each of these different types of mechanisms, with few exceptions, individual re searchers usually tend, understandably, to concentrate on their own specific areas of expertise, paying relatively little attention to rele vant research occurring in other areas. Consequently, they neglect or simply ignore the important question of the relative importance of the specific mechanism that they are studying, and the related question of the possible interrelationships that may exist between different mechanisms for the production of tolerance and sensitiza tion."

Beads made from Egyptian faience have been excavated from grave deposits (c. 4000-3100 BC), together with beads of glazed steatite (a soft rock) and of se- precious stones such as turquoise, carnelian, quartz, and lapis lazuli. Information on these and many more ancient beads used for ornaments and jewelry, ritual ceremonies, as art artifacts and gifts for amorous women throughout history, and descriptions of the raw materials (e. g. , glass, bone, precious and other stones) and manufacturing technologies used for their production can be located in many references. Many books are devoted to the description of beads that are not of water-soluble polymer origin, techniques for their production, their art, value, and distribution, re?ecting the wealth of information existing in this ?eld of science and art. On the other hand, there are no books fully devoted to the fascinating topic of hydrocolloid (polymeric) beads and their unique applications. A few books c- tain scattered chapters and details on such topics, while emphasizing the possibility of locating fragments of information elsewhere; however, again, there is no book that is solely devoted to hydrocolloid beads and their versatile applications. In the meantime, the use of water-soluble hydrocolloid beads is on the rise in many ?elds, making a book that covers both past and novel applications of such beads, as well as their properties and ways in which to manipulate them, crucial.

In my professional career as a pharmaceutical scientist, I have been involved with severalaspectsofthe drugdevelopmentprocessfrompre-INDto commercialization and, somehow, I usually found myself coming back to a stability-related issue. The stability area seemed to draw my utmost interest because in my day-to-day work, my opportunities involved more than one product, and none of the issues were the same.Eachsituationposedchallengesthatusuallyrequiredanexerciseofjudgment, an understandingof regulations, a knowledgeof science, a graspof compliance, and an appreciation of common practices. Sinceearly2000, Ihavealsobeeninvolvedwithseveraltrainingopportunitiesand I struggled to ?nd good, concise, practical resources, one of which I could just hand to a new scientist who wishes to gain a greater understanding of stability sciences. In addition, I encountered the same questions posted over and over on different stability best practices discussion forums. As a book lover, I also have a good collection of technical books. Unfor- nately, most of the stability related volumes are outdated. Many of these materials are theoretical and do not contain much practical information. I understand that the pharmaceutical industry during this period is quite volatile, and guidelines are changingrapidlywhileregulatoryagenciesareworkingcloselywiththepharmac- tical industryto accommodatethese changes;however, thefundamentalinformation continues to remain quite the same, just as current Good Manufacturing Practices (cGMP) continue to be the standard industry practice. Therefore, I hoped to ass- ble a practical handbook to ?ll this v

The formation of drug policy is a complex phenomena influenced by a multi tude of sources. Among others, these influences include historical factors, contemporary public opinion regarding the nature and magnitude of drug use and abuse, the portrayal of illicit drugs and drug use in the media, and lobbying efforts by special interest groups (e. g. , The Drug Policy Foundation), including government agencies (e. g. , the Justice Department and law enforcement). An additional source of influence are the activities of specialists directly engaged in studying drug use and treating drug dependence. This includes individuals involved in drug treatment, anthropological and cultural studies, policy analy ses, basic psychological and pharmacological research, research on the epide miology of drug use and dependence, and research on prevention. This influ ence by specialists might be usefully distinguished from those influences first mentioned for two reasons: First, studies of drug use and dependence attempt to uncover empirical generalizations about drugs, and second, because these findings are empirical, there is a hope that they guide, at least to some extent, the actions of other forces that more directly determine drug policy. Psychology as an empirical discipline has long been interested in the use of psychoactive drugs. At the level of basic science in psychopharmacology, a most important contribution has been the demonstration that drugs of abuse function as reinforcers and thus enter into the same psychological processes as do other appetitive stimuli.

Although numerous studies have been made of the Western educated political elite of colonial Nigeria in particular, and of Africa in general, very few have approached the study from a perspective that analyzes the impacts of indigenous institutions on the lives, values, and ideas of these individuals. This book is about the diachronic impact of indigenous and Western agencies in the upbringing, socialization, and careers of the colonial Igbo political elite of southeastern Nigeria. The thesis argues that the new elite manifests the continuity of traditions and culture and therefore their leadership values and the impact they brought on African society cannot be fully understood without looking closely at their lived experiences in those indigenous institutions where African life coheres. The key has been to explore this question at the level of biography, set in the context of a carefully reconstructed social history of the particular local communities surrounding the elite figures. It starts from an understanding of their family and village life, and moves forward striving to balance the familiar account of these individuals in public life, with an account of the ongoing influences from family, kinship, age grades, marriage and gender roles, secret societies, the church, local leaders and others. The result is not only a model of a new approach to African elite history, but also an argument about how to understand these emergent leaders and their peers as individuals who shared with their fellow Africans a dynamic and complex set of values that evolved over the six decades of colonialism.