CURRENT OPINION OF MUCO-ACTIVE DRUG RESEARCH - STRATEGIES AND PROBLEMS

In general, mucoactive drugs are classified into several groups, Howev er, since many drugs have overlapping effects, it is difficult to clas sify the drugs into groups based on their major actions, It has been r eported that many mucoactive drugs have antioxidant effects, It is rea sonable to suggest that an antiinflammatory property is crucial to dem onstrate effectiveness in a clinical contest, From this point of view, we have evaluated several mucoactive drugs over two decades. Of these , we will consider the following drugs with anti-inflammatory properti es: sodium aceneuramate; glucocorticoids; traditional Chinese medicine s; and new cysteine derivatives, On the basis of these findings, we be lieve that the efforts to seek for compatible actions between glucocor ticoids and oriental medicines may provide nem opportunities for devel opment of ideal mucoactive drugs with specified actions, i,e, suppress ion of gene expression.