816 Book Reviews
book went to press, abacavir and amprenavir have been re-
leased for marketing, and newer drugs (e.g., ABT-378/r and
the fusion inhibitor T-20) are progressing through clinical trials.
There also has been intense interest in the dyslipidemic and
lipodystrophic syndromes associated primarily but not exclu-
sively with protease inhibitor therapy. For a book such as this
to retain its value, frequent revisions and/or on-line updating
will be necessary. At the start of the 21st century, however,
Clinical Infectious Diseases: A Practical Approach
Edited by Richard K. Root, Francis Waldvogel, Lawrence
Corey, and Walter E. Stamm. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1999. 1013 pp., illustrated. $149.50.
The stated intention of the 4 editors of and 150 contributors
to this book is to provide practical, comprehensive, essential
information at a level between the general medical texts and
the more encyclopedic infectious diseases texts. I believe that
they have accomplished this task. The text is well organized
into 7 parts: pathophysiology of infectious diseases; diagnostic
methods; antimicrobial drugs: principles and usage; vaccines
and immunomodulatory agents; infectious disease syndromes;
infections in special patient/risk groups; and HIV infection and
AIDS.
The bibliography is conveniently annotated and relatively
current. There are 49 color photomicrographs and 110 black
and white reproductions of excellent quality. Many tables and
figures complement the text. The emphasis is primarily on adult
infectious diseases.
The section on pathophysiology addresses the specific or-
ganisms and their modus operandi. Epidemiology is discussed
in 16 pages. Host responses, acute inflammatory response, and
specific immune responses are covered in 3 chapters that are
clear and sufficiently simple to keep the reader’s attention. Di-
agnostic methods run the gamut from imaging studies to spe-
cific clinical microbiology. A very clinically useful 10-page chap-
ter on hematologic alterations in infectious disease patients is
Tropical Infectious Diseases: Principles, Pathogens,
and Practice
Edited by Richard L. Guerrant, David H. Walker, and Peter
F. Weller. Philadelphia: Churchill Livingstone, 1999. 1644 pp.,
illustrated. $295.
“How pleasant it is to welcome visitors from afar” declares
an ancient Chinese proverb. As doctors and global dwellers
circa 2000 C.E., most of us know this pleasure firsthand. We
are lucky to live in times of unequaled international contact
and collegiality.
However, as infectious diseases specialists, this sunny proverb
has a dark side. What if the visitors from afar are disease-
CID 2000;30 (May)
AIDS Therapy provides a useful desktop reference for the phy-
sician treating HIV infection in the United States and other
developed countries.
David F. Busch
Infectious Diseases Associates Medical Group and Infectious Diseases
Division, Department of Medicine, California-Pacific Medical Center,
San Francisco, California
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included in this section. The chapters on antibiotics are prac-
tical. A disproportionate 12 pages are devoted to aminogly-
cosides but only 7 pages to fluoroquinolones. The absence of
any reference to Gold and Moellering’s splendid article on an-
timicrobial drug resistance surprised me [1].
The real strength of this text is its patient-oriented focus.
Infectious disease syndromes are reviewed by organ systems,
similar to clinical presentations. Chapters are concise and rele-
vant to problems that clinicians see. Infections that are common
in specific patient/risk groups are discussed in individual chap-
ters of 6–10 pages. An admirable job is done of covering HIV
infection and AIDS in 73 pages. Unlike the large tomes on
infectious diseases, there are no references within the written
text. The annotated bibliography, however, is pleasantly
heuristic.
As befits a multiauthored text, there is a spectrum of writing
styles, which stands out if you read more than a few chapters
at a time. (The Elements of Style by W. Strunk, Jr., and E.B.
White should be mandatory reading for all authors.)
Students, house staff, and clinicians will find this text very
informative and enjoyable. There is also sufficient detail and
reference to provide the specialist with a resource.
Peter P. McKellar
Good Samaritan Regional Medical Center, Phoenix, Arizona
Reference
1. Gold HS, Moellering RC Jr. Antimicrobial-drug resistance. N Engl
J Med 1996; 335:1445–53.
bearing microbes or parasites? Often as not, we are the frontline
troops who diagnose, treat, and sometimes contain exotic path-
ogens. To state the obvious: it’s no longer a rarity to consult
on imported infections whether they be malaria, leishmani-
asis, or, yes, West Nile fever. For this reason I urge my fellow
practitioners to run, not walk, to purchase a remarkable new
textbook.
Tropical Infectious Diseases is a two-volume, 136-chapter
compendium whose list of contributors from the United States
and 16 other countries reads like an international who’s who
in tropical medicine. In their preface, the editors state these
goals: “to produce a superb, practical text focused on the most
clinically relevant information on tropical infectious diseases
CID 2000;30 (May) Book Reviews
essential to the clinician practicing in the tropics or seeing pa-
tients with potential exposure to tropical infectious diseases, as
well as to feature scientific experts as authors of an “unpar-
alleled fully referenced text that ) provides a thorough over-
view of the latest developments in immunology, pathogenesis,
genetics of virulence and new molecular approaches to diag-
nosis and control.”
Well, let’s face it, not all textbooks live up to their lofty
introductions; however, this one does. For example, consider
the chapter on Loa loa and Mansonella written by Amy Klion
and Tom Nutman, both seasoned clinical professionals and
researchers at the Laboratory of Parasitic Diseases, National
Institutes of Health. I still remember my first outpatient con-
sultation as an infectious diseases fellow: a returning Peace
Corps volunteer from West Africa whose blood smears teemed
with microfilaria. Although I had just completed a tropical
medicine course in London, when it came to actually treating
loaiasis, I had dozens of questions, ranging from exactly how
much diethylcarbamazine to use to start treatment, to whether
to use concurrent steroids, to whether to perform cytapheresis.
Then I had to present the case to a roomful of Boston aca-
demics. I could have really used this chapter, packed with clin-
ical wisdom and references.
A few years later, there was the investment banker who went
animal watching in Rwanda and sighted a new fly, a tsetse fly.
A week or two later, he was in our emergency department,
febrile (temperature to 407C), parasitemic, and dialing his law-
yer to rewrite his will. I spent a lot of long-distance change on
his case, too. Jacques Pépin and John Donelson’s chapter on
African trypanosomiasis would have answered most of my que-
ries about how to treat a patient infected with Trypanosoma
brucei rhodesiense, from first-line treatment to the frequency of
follow-up spinal taps.
However, cutting-edge clinical management is not the only
reason to buy Tropical Infectious Diseases. It is also a superb
scientific reference. In section 1, entitled “Principles and Gen-
eral Considerations,” are chapters that cover parasitism, ge-
Current Clinical Topics in Infectious Diseases
Edited by Jack S. Remington and Morton N. Swartz. Vol. 19.
Boston: Blackwell Science, 1999. 336 pp. $79.95.
Current Clinical Topics in Infectious Diseases for 1999—the
19th in the series—seems unusually timely and topical. Topics
range from the diagnosis of viral respiratory infections in im-
munocompromised patients, to prion diseases, to onychomy-
cosis. There is a nice combination of essays on new pathogens
and new perspectives on old pathogens. There are particularly
good summaries on chronic fatigue syndrome and influenza,
plus a fascinating essay by Richard Wenzel on the historical
and philosophical underpinnings of managed care and its con-
sequences for infectious disease physicians.
817
ography and climate, population dynamics of infectious dis-
eases in the tropics, host genetics and susceptibility to infection,
disease eradication and control, social and cultural factors in
disease, nutrition-infection interactions, vector biology, animal
and plant toxins, antimicrobial and antiparasitic chemotherapy,
and surveillance for emerging infections, among other topics.
Then there are the chapters that seamlessly integrate history,
science, and medicine. Don Krogstad’s overview of malaria,
with 350 references, falls in this category. It should be required
reading for every budding tropical medicine specialist; and yes,
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its table on treatment does include artesunate, artemether, and
atovaquone plus proguanil.
Finally, my personal checklist: are all tropical pathogens—
bacterial, spirochetal, chlamydial, rickettsial, fungal, proto-
zoan, helminthic, viral, and ectoparasitic—included? Yes. Are
the color plates, photographs, tables, and illustrations good?
Yes. Are there maps of disease distribution? Yes. Are special
patient groups considered? Yes, chapters are devoted to travel
medicine, immigrants, and military populations. Are organ sys-
tems and special syndromes covered? Yes, including eosino-
philia, anemia, and cutaneous, hepatobiliary, pulmonary, oc-
ular, neurological, urologic, and sexually transmitted diseases.
What about HIV infection and coexisting parasitic disease? It’s
there. Is information missing? Well, yes, but I had to hunt.
Lamivudine, promising oral therapy for some of the world’s
300 million chronic hepatitis B carriers, was hardly mentioned,
while treatment with parenteral IFN-a received disproportion-
ate press, given its low efficacy and impracticality in many
overseas settings.
In closing, I have a confession. I had already ordered my
own Tropical Infectious Diseases before the editor of Clinical
Infectious Diseases asked me to review it, but that’s okay. Now
I can keep a copy at home and a copy at work.
Claire Panosian
Division of Infectious Diseases, University of California
at Los Angeles Medical School, Los Angeles, California
The editors have asked their authors to confine their chapters
to relatively narrow subjects, to deal only with recent infor-
mation, and to offer a critical evaluation of the available data.
The contributing authors succeed admirably. Overall, the tone
is remarkably balanced—the commentaries all seem to have
sprung from the same expert pen (mouse?) instead of the pens
(mice?) of many recognized authorities. This reflects the
strength of both the editors and the authors. I don’t usually
buy these yearbook-type summaries, but this year I will make
an exception.
Rebecca Wurtz
Evanston Hospital, Evanston, Illinois