Detoxication Mechanisms [antikvár]

1 Preface to the Second Edition "IHE FIRST EDITION of this book appeared twelve years ago in 1947 and since that time there has been a rapid increase in our knowledge of the fate of foreign organic compounds in the animal body. When the book was first written in 1945, the available information on this subject, which may well be called the biochemistry of foreign organic compounds (or xenobiochemistry; xenos, Greek for strange or foreign), was fragmentary to say the least, and little, if anything, was known about the enzymology of foreign compounds. The increase in knowledge in this field has been so great that the book has had to be completely rewritten and its size enlarged two and a half times. The rapid development of this field was inevitable as soon as its practical applications were realized. Since the last war there has been a considerably increased use of synthetic organic chemicals in all spheres of human activity and these chemicals include drugs, insecticides and various other pesticides, food additives including colours, artificial flavours and antioxidants, industrial chemicals such as solvents, dry cleaning agents, and so on. The study of the fate of these compounds not only helps in explaining toxicity and drug action and the consequent prevention of toxicity and improvement of drugs, but it also contributes to the general fund of biochemical theory. The manuscript of this book was completed approximately in the first half of 1957 and by that time something was known about the metabolism of most of the major groups of synthetic organic compounds; furthermore, important advances had been made in understanding the enzymic mechanisms responsible for the metabolism of foreign compounds. Although much remains to be done, the subject is growing up. The study of the biochemistry of foreign compounds offers an apparently unlimited field of research when one considers the number of organic compounds now in existence and the number of different species of animals and plants in which each of these compounds could be studied. It is inevitable that in time this subject will become a subject of undergraduate study as it already has in some American universities, and it is already being applied with great effect in many fields, particularly those of industrial toxicology and drug metabolism.