The widespread interest in "stressful" aspects of contemporary society which contribute to its burden of illness and diseases (e.g. gastro intestinal, cardiovascular) has led to a large number of state ments and reports which relate the manifestations to a maladaptation of the individual. Furthermore, recent research suggests that under some condi tions stress may have a more generalized effect of decreasing the body IS ability to combat destructive forces and expose it to a variety of diseases. Breakdown in adaptation occurs when an individual cannot cope with demands inherent in his environment. These may be due to an excessive mental or physical load, including factors of a social or psychological nature and task performance requirements ranging from those which are monotonous, simple and repetitive to complex, fast, decision-taking ones. Experience shows however that not all people placed under the same condi tions suffer similarly, and it follows that to the social and psychological environment should be added a genetic factor influencing, through the brain, the responses of individuals. It is clear that, besides human suffering, this "breakdown in adaptation" causes massive losses of revenue to industry and national health authorities. Thus a reduction in "stress", before "breakdown" occurs, or an improvement in coping with it would be very valuable.

Growing experimental evidence is beeing produced in support of the thesis that lipid pe, oxidation is an important mediator of both vascular and myocardial tissue derangement. Although the role of the free-radical system in human cardiovascular pathology remains speculative, nevertheless the potential implications of such a system in both pharmacological therapy and prevention of major cardiovascular diseases, such as myocardial infarction, cardiomyopathy and arrhythmias, justify the increasing interest of clinical cardiologists in this research area. Furthermore, present-day clinical cardiology permits to reproduce in man such experimental models as ischemia and reperfusion, e.g. during percutaneous transluminal angioplasty, and even to gain histological and histochemical access to byoptic myocardial tissue. Upon above premises the idea of a multidisciplinary discussion meeting was conceived, aimed to confront clinical expectations with acquired basic information, and to discuss the validity of experimental models in the light of pathological and clinical findings in man. To this purpose, a unique group of experts in the field of free-radicals, from all over the world, was asked to make the topic accessible to clinical cardiologists, with the primary aim of projecting results and ideas towards potential clinical research; this is, in fact, the object of the European Concerted Action "Breakdown in Human Adaptation - Cardiovascular Diseases," in the frame of which the meeting was held.