LIVROS BOOK REVIEWS

JORDAN, Peter — Schistosomiasis. The St. Lucia Project. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1985. 442p. llus, ISBN 0 5921 30312 5

Schistosomiasis is a disease of man found in many tropical countries. It is caused by parasitic worms — Schistosoma spp. that require freshwater snails as an intermedial host. The mountainous island of St. Lucia in the Caribbean provided an ideal field laboratory for investigating the efficiency, advantages and disadvantages of different methods of controlling the intestinal form of schistosomiasis which is being spread with the construction of thous and of dams for hydroelectric irrigation and agricultural purposes in developing countries. When the St. Lucia project started in 1965 control of freshwater snails, an essential part of the life cycle of the parasite, was considered

the best approcah to preventing its spread, although this had not been convincingly demonstrated.

Other potential methods were possible and projects in three isolated valleys were designed to compare the effects of intensive snail control, environmental improvement (by providing villages with water) and the treatment of infected communities that had only just become possible with a single dose drag treatment. Over the next 15 years results of these and follow up studies were published in over a hundred scientific papers, and the St. Lucia schistosomiasis project became known worldwide to those;'interested in parasitic diseases. This book, therefore, links together the

phases leading to successful control and the subsequent unique 4-year programmes when different methods were investigated to maintain what had already been achived.

The book is two parts, the first dealing with the various control schemes, the second with the numerous complementary studies that were made — drug and molluscicide trials, biological control, the biological and human aspects of epidemiology and, in collaboration with the latest technology, immunological studies. While some of the work reported has been published, many unreported investigations are described to provide the reader with a complete record of the activities of the schistosomiasis project in St. Lucia.

HUSAN, I. — Tropical Urology and Renal Disease. Edinburgh, Churchill Livingstone, 1984. xiv, 435p. ilus. ISBN 0 443 02267 4.

The practice of urology in the tropics differs in many ways from the teaching of urology in specialised centres in countries of the more temperate zones. Although many diseases are basically the same, there are some in which the natural history and prognosis appears to be altered; for example, the incidence of carcinoma of the prostate, even when all allowances have been made for a different age structure, is less, markedly less, in some countries than in others. Even diseases exclusively seen in tropical areas, such as urinary blilharziasis, seem to vary from one endemic country to another.

In recent years, much new understanding has been gained into .the true nature and effect of diseases such as bilharziasis, and surgical management has been rationalised into more rewarding lines. There is also a considerable body of information relating to other tropical genitourinary tract disorders in the periodical literature and iri monographs, and for some time a need has been felt to collate all this into a single volume that may then serve as a clinical guide in management. If this book does meet that aim, it will undoubtedly do so on count of the quality of the contributions and

to the ready and generous response from the widely represented panel of collaborators. The

main objective has been to provide a tropical extension to the standard general textbook, to

include also an account of those conditions that are not exclusive to but present with a high

frequency in the Tropics and where management may require a varied approach — such as renal stone, urethral strictire and urinary vaginal fistula. It is true, however, that many clinicians immured in tropical practice find un certin acess to literature reporting recent advances in techniques of evaluation and treatment, and few can tap facilities for frequent travel to meetings abroad. A chapter has therefore been added which reviews modern diag- nostic methods and their application to the evaluation of disease patterns in the developing world, bibliography is extensive throughout, and appendices have been included on arma, mentarium and drugs in urological management. Two further appendix sections include an account of data review systems, important not only to clinical research but to the record, classification and evaluation of regional disease patterns; and a discussion of improved lowcost methods of sanitation which may play an important role in containing many of the vector transmitted diseases involving genitourinary tract in poorly developed regions of the Tropics

AITIO, Antero; RIIHIMAKI, Vesa & VAINIO, Harri — Biological Monitoring and Surveillace of workers exposed to chemicals. Washington, Hemisphere Publishing Corporation, 1984, 403p. ilus. ISBN 0-89116-253-4.

Biological monitoring has the ultimate objective of making an estimate of the health risk of an individual exposed to chemicals. The monitoring of early effects plays an important role in the health surveillance of exposed workers. Thus in the practical work of occupational medicine, both monitoring chemical up. takes and their possible effects are performed together, and these approaches complement each other.

This volume constitutes the Proceedings of the International Course on Biological Monitoring of Exposures to Industrial Chemicals, held in Hanasaari Cultural Centre, Espo, Finland, August 4-9, 1980.

The book contains general views on the theoretical basis, as well as practical aspects on the performance, of biological monitoring and health surveillance of certain chemicals which are of major interest in occupational health and toxicology.

HUDSON, Leslie — The Biology of Trypanosomes. Berlin, Springer Verlag, 1985. 183p. ilus. (Current Topics in Microbiology and Immunology, vol. 117). ISBN 3 540.15512-0.

African and South American trypanosomiases are notable features of clinical and veterinary practice in their respective endemic areas and, as such, are of considerable economic importance. Scientifically, however, their importance extendes beyond their clinical significance, as the trypanosomes are intriguing and easily manipulated models for the study of the control of gene expression, membrane chemis- try, proliferation and differentiation. This book is the only recent review of trypanosome biology as a genetic entity; in it, fundamental parasite biochemistry is developed alongside the parasite's interaction with host cells, both in vitro and in vivo, in a way that reflects the multi disciplinary nature of contributions to present knowledge in this rapidly expanding field of research,

McLAY, Arthur L.C. & TONER, Peter G. — Subcellular taxonomy: an ultrastructural classification system with diagnostic applications. Washington, Hemisphere Publishing Corporation, 1985. 86p. (An Ultrastructural Pathology Publication Series), ISBN 0-89116-293.3 ISSN 0730-6482.

The book Subcellular Taxonomy, of Arthur L. C. McLay and Peter G. Toner deals with a classification of the SNOMED type applied to subcellular structures. The book proposes a system of ultrastructural classification with eventual diagnostic applications. The subcellular toxonomy suggested can be used in a computer system and data cross will enable the researcher to reach to important conclusions The idea is up to date and of high value for the pathologist practice.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  16 Oct 2012
• Date of issue
  Aug 1986