Marie-Françoise Chesselet, ed.
Humana Press, 2000, 410 pages
Thomas J. Nelson
Alzheimers disease is a rapidly-changing
field. This book is a collection of monographs on various neurodegenerative
diseases including Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, and
less well-known diseases like CAG trinucleotide repeat disorders
that produce spinocerebellar ataxias, Huntington's disease, and
spinobulbar muscular atrophy (SBMA). The chapters are about evenly
divided among these three categories and give a good overview of
their respective fields. Written at a level suitable for a graduate
student, clinician or researcher. Chapters on Alzheimer's disease cover
beta-amyloid toxicity, animal models, inflammation, proteolysis,
tau and synuclein, and treatment approaches. The chapter on proteases
was written shortly after beta-secretase (BACE1) was cloned back
in 1999, so it contains no discussion of the recently-discovered
proteolytic activation of alpha- and beta-secretases. Each of the
16 chapters has about 100-300 references, which
will get the reader oriented to the literature up to the year 1999.
Has 3 color figures, a few graphs, and a very mediocre index.
Because of the close similarities among these diseases, people
working in this field need to understand all of them. This book
does an excellent job at getting the reader oriented.
October 8, 2002
