Pharmacology of amino acids

In a review of the pharmacology of amino acids twenty years ago, 16 it was stated that “simple amino‐acids do not show startling drug reactions.” This statement is basically true today, but in the intervening years amino acids which are not constituents of protein have been discovered at an average rate of about ten per year. 157 In addition, there has been an awakening of interest in the effects of general and specific amino acid excess and deficiency, and a realization that chronic amino acid imbalance, found in one of the most common of human diseases, malnutrition, and in the rare but instructive inborn errors of amino acid metabolism, gives important information of the pharmacology of amino acids in man. In a discussion of the pharmacology of important natural products the boundaries between physiology and pharmacology become blurred, but in this review the latter aspect will naturally be emphasized.