{[['
']]}
']]}
The second edition of Handbook of Drugs for Tropical Parasitic Infections is a product from the Unit of Tropical Pharmacology at the Department of Clinical Pharmacology, Huddinge University Hospital. The unit is a collaborative venture between the Departments of Infectious Diseases and Clinical Pharmacology, and
the Hospital Pharmacy. Our department has been involved for many years in research on drugs used in the treatment of tropical parasitic infections. The emphasis has been to develop and apply new bioanalytical techniques to study the clinical pharmacokinetics and metabolites of old and new drugs. Research fellows from Africa, Asia, and South America have participated in this work giving us important feedback from areas where tropical diseases are endemic. Dr Yakoub Aden Abdi from Somalia is one of these past fellows who has devoted his research on the reevaluation of old antiparasitic drugs. It is an honour that he and his Swedish colleagues asked me to write this Preface. During the past 40 years novel drugs have been introduced for diseases that were in the past the cause of death of thousands of people. Advances in the field
of clinical pharmacology have contributed to a safer and more effective use of both old and new drugs and thereby to better patient care. In particular, new knowledge about genetic and environmental determinants of drug metabolism in humans has made it possible to introduce rational strategies in drug treatment. Pharmacoepidemiology, a science concerned with epidemiological aspects of the safety and efficacy of drug products and their utilization in the population, has also grown in importance in recent years. Developed and less developed countries seem to share a number of problems leading to irrational drug use such as old fashioned teaching in pharmacology, drug information that is productrather than problem-oriented and increasing criticism among patients and politcians about how drugs are being prescribed by physicians.
