Inflammation: Basic Principles and Clinical Correlates

Abstract

This huge book bears testimony to an explosion of knowledge in a field of science that had, until the past quarter century, rested on five Galenic pillars (or Celsus' four, if one would have it simpler) of heat, redness, swelling, pain, and functional loss. The Big Bang took place so recently that most of the contents are barely known to clinicians, who will also find it difficult to swim through the alphabet soup of cytokines, growth factors, immunoglobulins, oxyradicals, adhesion molecules, prostanoids, complement, and other soluble and cellular components of inflammation. Yet this is the information that will help formulate the next generation of therapeutic interventions, better targeted than what we now have available, and thus the first 708 pages serve as a lexicon for reference. The material would be even more accessible if the distinguished array of authors had provided simplified summaries to set the stage for their chapters,