MOLECULAR MECHANISMS OF NEURODEGENERATIVE DISEASES.: By Marie-Francoise Chesselet. 2000. Totowa: Humana Press. Price $125.00. Pp. 410. ISBN 0-89603-804-1.

Abstract

The development of cellular and animal models of neurodegenerative disease has fuelled research into the basic mechanisms of neurodegeneration over the last decade. The profusion of original papers covering this topic reflects these advances. A Medline search between 1980 and 1990 identified 500 original articles specifically addressing the mechanisms of neurodegeneration, but in a similar time period between 1990 and March 2001, the number increased 10-fold to over 5500. As the editor of Molecular Mechanisms of Neurodegenerative Diseases points out, a comprehensive review of the literature would require much more than the 500 folio pages in this book, so there has to be a compromise. There are two ways around the problem of writing a short book on a large topic. One is to focus on common mechanisms, illustrating our understanding of these mechanisms by referring to specific disease entities. The other is to focus on a collection of specific disorders and hope that this covers the most important areas. This book takes the latter approach: it is disease-based, rather than mechanism-based. This has the advantage that, by and large, each chapter deals with the subject matter in satisfactory detail. Unfortunately, its major disadvantage is that after reading the whole book, the reader is not left with an overview of our contemporary understanding of common cellular mechanisms …