Chronobiology, drug-delivery, and chronotherapeutics.

All functions in man are highly organized in time as biological rhythms of diverse periods, both in health and in disease. This represents a challenge for those involved in the development of drug-delivery systems to make possible the treatment of illness according to these physiological biological rhythms as a means of improving therapeutic outcomes. Though constant-release drug-delivery systems seem to improve patient compliance to many diverse treatments (e.g., for hypertension), rhythmicity in biological functions and in the mechanisms of disease should be mirrored by respective drug-release programs.