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Book Review
Immunology of Infectious Diseases
Stefan H.E. Kaufmann, Alan Sher, and Rafi
Ahmed
American Society for Microbiology Press, Washington, D.C., 520 pages
Suggested citation for this article: Lazar
T. Immunology of infectious diseases (book review). Emerg Infect Dis
[serial online] 2002 Nov [date cited];8. Available from: URL:
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/EID/vol8no11/02-0430.htm
Whether an infectious
disease agent is an “old acquaintance” or a new, emerging threat, the
immune system’s battle against it is usually the first line of defense
it encounters. With vaccines and effective treatments often unavailable,
the immune system’s efforts to eradicate infectious agents or infected
cells are frequently the only means to combat them. Understanding the
immune system—as well as the infectious agent’s tactics to undermine it—is
of vital importance to the researcher and clinician. This textbook attempts
to provide just this information.
Immunology of Infectious Diseases is a textbook in the best
sense of the word, presenting its contents in a clear, structured manner.
Instead of encylopedic coverage of every infectious disease agent known,
a set of paradigmatic infections were selected on the basis of the depth
of available knowledge. The book is divided into eight sections, each
of which addresses a particular aspect of the host-infectious agent interaction,
describing it in separate chapters for bacteria, fungi, parasitic eukaryotes,
and viruses. So instead of discussing all aspects of viral diseases, the
reader learns about the innate immune response to the various pathogens,
chapter by chapter, in the respective section. Emphasis is thereby placed
on the immune system’s “point of view” about an infectious process, rather
than on the microbe’s.
After an introduction
to the various classes of infectious disease agents, the book describes
the immune responses directed against the different types of infections,
proceeding from the innate to the acquired (adaptive). Discussion of the
pathology of infections not eradicated by the immune system early on and
the cunning strategies of the infectious microbes to evade immune attacks
is followed by sections on immunogenetics and exploration of the immune
system’s interventions against two high-incidence infections, tuberculosis
and AIDS.
Although the infections discussed in this book are not emerging
ones in the strictest sense, the example of AIDS shows just how fast an
infectious disease that was emerging, seemingly restricted to a subset
of the population only two decades ago, can grow into a pandemic in a
highly mobile, dense population at the end of the 20th century. Even tuberculosis,
the “wasting disease” dreaded by our grandfathers’ generation, which scientists
believed to be under control, can be regarded as an emerging disease:
Mycobacterium tuberculosis has stepped into the limelight again in
the wake of HIV, which renders a growing number of people immunocompromised.
As infection and immune reaction are so intricately intertwined,
this book is valuable reading to anyone interested in infectious diseases
in humans. Maybe in the future prions will have to be included as a new
type of infectious agent whose rise we are just now witnessing. (Information
on prion pathology is still hotly debated, and data on routes of transmission
and immune system reactions are still scarce.)
The book is a handy and manageable length.
In contrast to many standard textbooks of immunology, Immunology of Infectious
Diseases is text oriented. Except for a central insert of color plates,
figures are in black and white only. Each chapter contains an alphabetical
list of references. Because of its accessible modular structure, this
textbook is easy to navigate, rendering it easy to use. The book is suitable
for anyone with a background in cell biology and basic immunology. Advanced
undergraduate students and postgraduates with a grasp of the main groups
of leukocytes and immune effector mechanisms, as well as specialists in
other subdisciplines, will find this textbook to be a highly useful and
readable introduction to the immune system’s mainstay, the battle against
infection.
Thomas Lazar
Institute of Transfusion Medicine
Humboldt University Medical School, Berlin, Germany
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