Therapeutic Implications of Drug Metabolism.

Information on how drugs are metabolized is not only of importance in understanding their therapeutic action, but can furnish useful clues for the development of new drugs. The various aspects of drug metabolism studies which are considered in this paper are (i) Pathways of drug metabolism— conversion to active, inactive or toxic metabolites; (ii) Structural changes which determine a drug's metabolism and excretion; (iii) Species differences in drug metabolism; (iv) Enzyme induction as an important factor in drug safety evaluation.