Journal of Analytical Chemistry, Vol. 56, No. 11, 2001, p. 985. Translated from Zhurnal Analiticheskoi Khimii, Vol. 56, No. 11, 2001, p. 1125. Original Russian Text Copyright © 2001 by Zolotov.
FROM THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Analytical Chemistry and Medicine Medical diagnostics uses the results of clinical analysis, which is largely chemical analysis. The scales of this analysis are vast; the reagents for it are produced and consumed in large lots and long runs. In addition to general clinical analysis, numerous determinations of a more specific nature are widely performed. Glucose is determined in the blood of diabetics; hence, the glucose biosensor is the most widespread biosensor produced by many companies. Steroids and other stimulants are determined in the urine of athletes; this is doping control. The level of cholesterol in blood is now desirable to be determined frequently, easily, and at home, and the corresponding methods and instruments have been developed. Many analyses of body tissues and biological fluids are performed for the needs of medical science. One way or another, medical toxicologists face the necessity of the determination of toxic substances. Medical hygienists have even more trouble in this field. By the way, they play perhaps the most important part in establishing the maximum permissible concentrations of substances. The other extensive field is the control of drug production and control of identity and purity of drugs in their further motion to the consumer. There are also studies of the distribution and metabolism of drugs in the organism (pharmacokinetics and allied fields), but this is the area of scientific medicine. In Russia, the specialists who are involved in chemical analysis for medicine are connected with physicians rather than with analysts. These two communities
seem to live in parallel. While those who are involved in drug analysis communicate somehow with the analysts working with different samples or developing some general fields of analytical chemistry (for example, its methods), those who develop methods for clinical or other medical analyses, and especially those who actually use these methods for routine analysis, have no contacts with professional analysts. We have never seen them among the members of the Scientific Council on Analytical Chemistry of the Russian Academy of Sciences and rarely see them at conferences on analytical chemistry. We should think that this is bad for both communities. Professional analysts and developers of methods, instruments, reagents, and metrological approaches are unaware of the needs of medicine and, therefore, do not direct their efforts toward this field. Medical analysts can miss some new methodological, technical, computer, or other solutions or some new reagents and ways of using them. This problem was recognized long ago, but nothing has been done for its solution. In the meantime, in some other countries, for example, in the United States, there are various “intersections” of these two communities, for example, meetings like the Pittsburgh Conference on Analytical Chemistry and Applied Spectroscopy or the Conference of the Federation of Analytical Chemistry and Spectroscopy Societies (FACS).
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Yu. A. Zolotov
