Pharmacology Goodman and Gilman's The Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics Digital Edition edited by Laurence L. Brunton, John S. Lazo, and Keith L. Parker, 11th ed, includes online subscription, drug database, and PDA download capability, 2021 pp, with illus, $195, ISBN 0-07-146804-8, New York, NY, McGraw-Hill Medical Publishing Division, 2006. JAMA. 2006;295: 2791-2792.It's here. It's improved.

It's worth the cost of replacing prior editions. It's well worth the time to read.The 11th text edition and first digital edition of the classic Goodman and Gilman's The Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics is a worthy successor to all that has come before. For the first time with neither a Goodman nor a Gilman among authors or editors, the influences of the original authors remain: not just the brand-name title but book organization, perspective, style, and teaching philosophy.The new book is smaller (by 127 pages, three chapters, and one quarter inch in width). Still, it's got more: new chapters on membrane transporters, drug metabolism, pharmacogenetics, and inflammatory bowel disease bring the student some of the latest pharmacology developments. A pesky chapter on ethanol remains, justified more by the ways in which ethanol interferes with human physiology and pharmacological therapies than by its nearly extinct clinical uses, which occupy only three paragraphs. The reader will not miss the chapters that have been removed, including those on vitamins (about which some information has been retained in other chapters), solvents and pesticides, and the history of anesthesiology.

Now with 16 major sections, the basic organization of the text largely resembles that of prior editions. General principles comprise the first section, which has five chapters, and also the first appendix, "Prescription Writing and Patient Compliance." Sections 2 and 3 cover drugs acting at nerve terminals and in the central nervous system, respectively. Five sections are organized by disease targets section 4, inflammatory diseases; section 7, parasitic diseases; section 8, bacterial, viral, and fungal diseases; section 9, neoplastic diseases; and section 15, toxicology. Eight other sections are organized by organ system. The second appendix, on optimizing dosage regimens, still holds my single most favorite drug reference, G&G's Pharmacokinetic Data table, now filling 94 pages with half-lives, volumes of distribution, clearances, and concentration data.Most chapters begin with background information on normal anatomy and physiology of the systems being discussed, some history of early pharmacologic developments in the field, and an overview of the diseases to be treated, including signs and symptoms, populations at risk, and global impacts of disease. Discussion of drugs belonging to that chapter often includes their cellular targets, mechanisms of action, absorption and elimination kinetics, and clinical and adverse effects.

Molecular drawings are provided; US brand names are often listed. Numerous tables and multitone diagrams condense, simplify, and sometimes explain this large body of knowledge.Now, five decades after newborns died because their chloramphenicol doses were calculated via extrapolation from studies of the drug's behavior in adults, four decades after thousands of babies were born with malformations due to in utero thalidomide exposures, three decades after the diethylstilbestrol disaster was explained, 25 years after the benzyl alcohol gasping syndrome was described and salicylate exposure was linked to Reye syndrome, 12 years after the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Pediatric Final Rule, nine years after the FDA Modernization Act, and four years after the Best Pharmaceuticals for Children Act, and with more than 100 pediatric-specific labeling changes listed by the FDA,1 this textbook still inexplicably lacks discussion of pharmacology for children. Whether the editors assume that children are just li.