This is the story of how Wilson’s disease, a previously rare and fatal inherited disease, was conquered by a series of individual discoveries, leading to highly effective treatments. It also describes the difficulties which had to be overcome to achieve this in the face of government and institutional bureaucracy. It should be of interest to those involved in medical research, to doctors interested in rare diseases and to the lay public who want to know how medical advances are made. Technical details are kept to a minimum so that an understanding of medical and technical terms is not needed. The Ebook should prove to be a very useful resource for researchers studying Wilson’s disease and its history in medicine.

Since the Tokyo Sarin Subway Attack, the threat of chemical warfare agents has migrated from the battlefield to become a major concern for homeland security in the 21th century. While current fielded antidotes are able to mitigate acute high mortality arising from exposure to nerve agents, achieving effective neuroprotection in subjects with nerve agent induced prolonged seizures or status epilepticus is currently lacking. To overcome this challenge, establishing an improved understanding on the mechanism linking seizure onset during chemical (including nerve agents) poisoning to the subsequent cascade of biochemical, neurotoxicological, pathophysiological, genomic and behavioral changes post exposure is vital. Due to ethical, safety and chemical surety related issues, looking for surrogate chemicals has also become important for chemical defense research. In this book, internationally well-known clinicians and basic research scientists with expertise on chemical-induced seizures will update readers on the relevant areas. Doctors (civil and military), paramedics and medical students will find this book informative and timely for the current battle against asymmetric terrorist conflicts.

Emerging Technologies in Women’s Health is the first of a series of books dedicated providing updates on rapid advances in new technologies in women’s healthcare for researchers and clinicians. This eBook explains techniques of performing minimally invasive robotic surgery in a concise manner. Each chapter is contributed by experts in advanced laparoscopic and robotic surgery and contains several useful line drawn illustrations and photographs. This eBook should be of interest to gynecologic surgeons, fellows and residents.

This eBook compiles the efforts of 20 experts in the field to review the latest advances in experimental stroke, with its strong emphasis on neurogenesis, angiogenesis and neuroprotection after cerebral ischemic stroke. It also provides current data for pharmacologic therapy, including anti-Inflammation, for stroke. Several chapters address cell death and apoptotsis after stroke as well as its replacement strategies by stem cells. Other chapters deal with the relation between stroke and neuroimmunology, BBB disruption and electrophysiological changes. Also covered is magnetic resonance imaging in ischemic brain. In a variety of preclinical models of stroke, pre-conditional and post-conditional stroke models will be discussed.

“Frontiers in Anti-Infective Drug Discovery” is an eBook series devoted to publishing the latest and the most important advances in Anti-Infective drug design and discovery. Eminent scientists write contributions on all areas of rational drug design and drug discovery including medicinal chemistry, in-silico drug design, combinatorial chemistry, high-throughput screening, drug targets, recent important patents, and structure-activity relationships. The eBook series should prove to be of interest to all pharmaceutical scientists involved in research in Anti-Infective drug design and discovery. Each volume is devoted to the major advances in Anti-Infective drug design and discovery. The eBook series is essential reading to all scientists involved in drug design and discovery who wish to keep abreast of rapid and important developments in the field.

Insulin resistance is the main factor involved in the occurrence of the metabolic syndrome and later development of type2 diabetes. Despite decades of research on hormone's target tissues and the identification of most diverse candidates, the factors responsible for insulin resistance are still largely undefined. There is also a large discrepancy between in vitro and in vivo insulin sensitivity. Finally it is increasingly demonstrated that insulin resistance is found very early in life, long before metabolic syndrome is established. In search for commonalities, this book deals therefore with a new hypothesis considering microcirculation as one prime, possibly causal effector of insulin resistance. To present this novel hypothesis, the specificities of microvascular physiological mechanisms and the limits of interpretations of data according to the measurement techniques used are first thoroughly described. Several chapters deal with experimental and clinical investigations showing the involvement of microcirculation in insulin resistance. This book provides sound support for microcirculation being linked to insulin resistance at least in a bidirectional way. Supportive evidence suggests that microvascular dysfunction may lie upstream of insulin resistance in many of them. While this is still a hypothesis, the authors believe that there is enough data supporting it and hope that this book will stimulate researchers to provide the necessary final proofs.

This Ebook is edited by Sandra Hodge, a recognized expert in the field of macrophage dysfunction in chronic lung disease. The book consists of 8 chapters which provide a full coverage of macrophage function in both healthy and chronically diseased lungs, starting with the regulation of macrophage homoestasis to altered macrophage recognition and clearance of pathogens and apoptotic cells in the lung before moving on to macrophage targeted treatment options for chronic lung diseases. The important problem of oxidative and carbonyl stress in the lung and its impact on macrophage function is discussed. Additional chapters deal with the role of disordered macrophage function in cancer progression and the role of chronic alcohol ingestion of macrophage function. Importantly, the book integrates both respiratory cell biology and clinical medicine. The concept of failed macrophage function with regard to chronic lung disease has recently been the topic of intensive research. Key advances in our knowledge of the cellular and molecular mechanisms involved in defective macrophage function have paved the way for the development of novel diagnostic and therapeutic strategies for diseases such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and asthma. For this reason the book can be recommended without reservation to a wide spectrum of readers including students, respiratory cell biologists and respiratory clinicians.

During the last two decades microsurgery has progressively taken the place of macrosurgery since it largely improves the experimental models in liver research. This is a concise but comprehensive book focusing on key issues in microsurgical techniques for liver research. The book has been written for medical, biological, veterinary and pharmaceutical researchers and advanced students who wish to develop experimental models of liver diseases by using microsurgery. The book is organized in twelve chapters in which the basic and applied aspects of experimental liver surgery are included. Many illustrations are given to reproduce each microtechnique which should particularly useful to the readers.

Host defense to intracellular pathogens depends upon both innate and adaptive cell-mediated immune responses. Polymorphonuclear neutrophil leukocytes which belong to the innate immune system are the first cells that are recruited massively within hours of microbial infection. The importance of neutrophils in the development of an immune response is only emerging as they have long been considered by immunologists as short lived, non-dividing cells, of poor interest. Now, neutrophils are emerging as key components of the inflammatory response, and are shown to have immunoregulatory roles in microbial infections. The impact of neutrophils on cells present at the site of infection is only beginning to be studied and deserves more attention. This e-book provides an overview of the recent advances made in the field of neutrophil biology and motions towards some of the exciting new directions in which neutrophil research is moving.

The potential use of stem cells in transplantation for the purpose of tissue regeneration is an exciting area of research currently undergoing rapid development. Implantation of human embryonic or autologous, ex vivo-expanded adult stem cells, particularly in older individuals, could circumvent the limited availability of organs/tissues as well as prevent complications related to immune rejection and disease transmission. Musculoskeletal tissue degeneration is closely associated with aging. Strategies employing autologous adult MSCs from older individuals for transplantation in order to regenerate their own ailing organ or tissues require that we vigorously define MSCs capacity to maintain growth potential and differentiation potential into the desirable cell lineages. We are currently restricted by the limited knowledge about physical parameters, such as biomechanical forces, that influence MSC growth and differentiation capacities. This is particularly important for MSCs isolated from older individuals, for whom little information is available. This special volume aims to serve as an impetus in generating more interest among stem cell researchers and biotechnologists to improve and develop the cell-based therapies of damaged tissue using stem cells.