- Email: [email protected]
The wide world of stress
420
Forum
TRENDS in Endocrinology & Metabolism Vol.12 No.9 November 2001
Web Watch
Rickets and the discovery of vitamin D Francis Glisson (1597–1677) gave one the first thorough accounts of rickets in 1650 and detailed information about him is provided by Rice University’s excellent Galileo Project, which in addition to a wealth of information on Galileo includes a comprehensive bibliography of 16th and 17th century scientists (http://es.rice. edu/ES/humsoc/Galileo/). Glisson’s book, De rachitide, is one of the earliest instances of collaborative medical
research, reporting the work carried out by Glisson and seven contemporaries. Apart from their failure to recognize the role of the diet, their description of rickets was complete. It was not until 1918 that Edward Mellanby (1884–1955), experimenting with dogs, demonstrated that diet was the determining factor, and that cod liver oil could prevent rickets. A delightful early account of the oil can be found in King’s American Dispensatory from 1898, which has been put online at http://www. ibiblio.org/herbmed/eclectic/kings/ga dus_oleu.html. A current review of the role of fish oils in prevention of coronary heart disease is published by the American Heart Foundation at http:// www.americanheart.org/Scientific/ statements/1996/1102.html. Following important work by Elmer McCollum (1879–1967) that established a link between rickets and a constituent of the oil that he called ‘vitamin D’, Harry Steenbock (1886–1967) demonstrated that rats fed irradiated foods or irradiated skin were protected against rickets, whereas those fed unirradiated foods or skin were not. The following year, Steenbock founded the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (http://www.wisc. edu/warf/warfmiss.html) to commercialize his discovery of a way of curing rickets – the food irradiation
process (see http://uw-food-irradiation. engr.wisc.edu/Process.html). Adolf Windaus (1876–1959), professor of chemistry and director of the chemistry laboratories at the University of Göttingen from 1915 to 1944 (http://www.museum.chemie.unigoettingen.de/windaus.htm), was later to discover and synthetically prepare vitamin D3, the component of vitamin D that is most important in preventing rickets. A brief biography of can be found among some 500 000 other entries at http://www.xrefer.com, a database providing free access to over 50 reference titles, including encyclopedias, dictionaries, thesauri and collections of quotations. For his research on sterols, especially in relation to vitamins, he received the 1928 Nobel Prize in Chemistry (http://www.nobel.se/ chemistry/ laureates/1928/windaus-bio.html). There is a detailed and well-researched article on the history of vitamin D published by the National Academy of Sciences at http://www4.nas.edu/ beyond/beyonddiscovery.nsf/web/ vitd7?OpenDocument and the University of California at Riverside has an excellent website dedicated to this hormone, with pages on its history, chemistry and biochemistry, and on nutrition and disease relating to vitamin D (http://vitamind. ucr.edu/about.html).
influence that can exacerbate disease, promote psychopathology and generally disrupt the lifestyle of its victims. In spite of the obvious impact of stress, the concept has resisted classification. Indeed, over the years, researchers have developed a reluctance to even define the construct that drives this field. As such, the development of an all-encompassing work of this magnitude is immediately confronted with the immensity of the ‘stress’ concept itself. Producing a definitive volume about an ill-defined and oft-disputed theoretical construct is a daunting task. The Encyclopedia of Stress is a bold, imaginative attempt at generating comprehensive and accessible coverage of this complex field of scientific endeavor.
The title of this review reflects an old American television show, The Wide World of Sports. The Wide World presented a cornucopia of sporting events, ranging from ski jumping to cliff diving, volleyball to water polo, ice skating to surfing. This is in essence what one takes from the Encyclopedia of Stress – an effective blend of articles spanning molecular to psychosocial orientations, written by top stress researchers from around the globe. The net effect of the volume is similar to the effect of The Wide World of Sports: readers can find a wealth of diverse and engaging articles within its covers, regardless of their specialist sphere of interest. George Fink has done an admirable job of selecting contributors and articles that encompass the scope of contemporary
Book Review
The wide world of stress Encyclopedia of Stress edited by George Fink. Academic Press, 2000. US$425.00 (xcvi + 2328 pages, three volume set) ISBN 0122267354
I have always been impressed by the many incarnations of stress research. Stress is a variable of considerable importance to all facets of psychology and physiology because it has an http://tem.trends.com
Forum
stress research. The layout and succinct tone of the articles offer a consistent and generally easy read that will be of value to both active stress researchers and the lay public. Each article includes a glossary of terms, a short synopsis, a brief text and a selective bibliography of relevant literature. The inclusion of a glossary at the beginning of each article is of substantial value for introducing concepts covered in the text and it works particularly well as an orientation for readers unfamiliar with each subject area. The editor and authors have also taken great pains to limit the use of abbreviations and jargon, ensuring that the articles are accessible to a wide audience. This is most noticeable in the articles on the biology of stress, which can often present an alphabet soup of abbreviations and acronyms. In general, the authors keep the articles concise, and thus avoid a descent into excruciating detail. As such, most articles are suitable for a range of readers. A work of this sort hinges on citing the most important contributions to the topic. The bibliographies in this volume are generally effective, listing useful references after every article. Although the format is excellent, the quality of the bibliographies varies widely. Some contributors take pains to provide a short list of approachable, general references, whereas others offer lists of primary literature contributions that might or might not be useful to the reader, depending on their level of sophistication. The former approach works better in a book like this because it provides the readership with access to literature that is geared to an incrementally more specialized audience. The primary literature citations might be less useful to readers who are not active researchers. Furthermore, primary literature citations are often biased towards the authors’ own work, providing only a partial view of the major advances in the field. There are of course some problems inherent to a volume of this magnitude, the most salient of which is the heterogeneity of its component parts. Articles are authored by a diverse group of experts, all of whom have their own particular take on the issues at hand. As a consequence, the depth of the articles varies widely. Some are fairly superficial, recapitulating common knowledge and lending little weight to what is intuitively http://tem.trends.com
TRENDS in Endocrinology & Metabolism Vol.12 No.9 November 2001
obvious; others offer levels of detail that could be lost on a lay readership. Many of the more detailed articles are essential for understanding the contemporary state of biological stress research, and the inaccessibility of the science might inhibit the ability of non-expert readers to access important concepts and approaches. Using so many contributors also causes some redundancy. For example, there are several articles on stress associated with specific disasters; these have similar content and probably could have been more effectively presented as a single, larger article. Several concepts (e.g. the organization of the hypothalamo–pituitary–adrenocortical axis) are summarized and discussed in multiple articles, with varying degrees of detail. Although useful for framing the individual author’s perspective, the repetition can be distracting. The heterogeneity of the volume also leads to some contradiction between articles. For example, some of the psychosocial perspectives offer biological background that is outdated or incorrect. These articles tend, in general, to be among the more easily accessible, and thus the non-expert reader could spend considerable time reading this volume and come away with a very superficial and perhaps erroneous understanding of the complex biology of stress. Conversely, many of the biologically oriented articles omit the psychological principles underlying the problem of stress, and others skirt around the problem of stress altogether, thus failing to grip the interest of readers who need to know biological principles underlying stress and its consequences. A final problem is one inherent to all volumes that attempt to summarize contemporary science: it is already dated. Unfortunately, the pace of modern biology exceeds the pace of book publication, and this is evident in the Encyclopedia of Stress. For example, there is little discussion of genomic approaches to stress research, nor of the advent of highthroughput approaches to design and screening of drugs that are relevant to stress and anxiety. This is an unfortunate reality of all traditionally published materials, and the editor and authors cannot be faulted on this account; it is inevitable that such volumes lag behind the current state of the art, and will lag further as time passes.
421
Nonetheless, these minor drawbacks do not dissuade me from recommending the Encyclopedia of Stress as a reference for clinicians, scientists and lay people interested in the problem of stress. The book provides an excellent overview of the current state of stress research. It is well organized and the articles are short and easily digestible. Although it makes the volume uneven as a whole, the heterogeneity of the articles has advantages: it gives the book value across the spectrum of reader sophistication and interest. There are articles in this volume that will suit the senior stress researcher and the interested lay person, the psychologist and the endocrinologist or molecular biologist. In sum, this is a work that will be a valuable addition to the libraries of researchers and practitioners working in the field of stress endocrinology, in addition to those wishing to increase their understanding of the biology and psychology of the wide, complex and multifaceted ‘world’ of stress research. James P. Herman Dept of Psychiatry, University of Cincinnati School of Medicine, Cincinnati, OH 45267-0559, USA. e-mail: [email protected]
The renin–angiotensin– aldosterone system: into the new millennium Angiotensin Protocols edited by Donna H. Wang. Humana Press, 2001, US$125.00 (xiv + 530 pages) ISBN 0896037630
The renin–angiotensin–aldosterone system (RAAS), a multifunctional physiological system, has a central role in cardio- and cerebrovascular physiology. Over the past two decades, the contribution of the RAAS to human pathophysiology and its therapeutic modulation has been extensively investigated,
Forum
TRENDS in Endocrinology & Metabolism Vol.12 No.9 November 2001
Web Watch
Rickets and the discovery of vitamin D Francis Glisson (1597–1677) gave one the first thorough accounts of rickets in 1650 and detailed information about him is provided by Rice University’s excellent Galileo Project, which in addition to a wealth of information on Galileo includes a comprehensive bibliography of 16th and 17th century scientists (http://es.rice. edu/ES/humsoc/Galileo/). Glisson’s book, De rachitide, is one of the earliest instances of collaborative medical
research, reporting the work carried out by Glisson and seven contemporaries. Apart from their failure to recognize the role of the diet, their description of rickets was complete. It was not until 1918 that Edward Mellanby (1884–1955), experimenting with dogs, demonstrated that diet was the determining factor, and that cod liver oil could prevent rickets. A delightful early account of the oil can be found in King’s American Dispensatory from 1898, which has been put online at http://www. ibiblio.org/herbmed/eclectic/kings/ga dus_oleu.html. A current review of the role of fish oils in prevention of coronary heart disease is published by the American Heart Foundation at http:// www.americanheart.org/Scientific/ statements/1996/1102.html. Following important work by Elmer McCollum (1879–1967) that established a link between rickets and a constituent of the oil that he called ‘vitamin D’, Harry Steenbock (1886–1967) demonstrated that rats fed irradiated foods or irradiated skin were protected against rickets, whereas those fed unirradiated foods or skin were not. The following year, Steenbock founded the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (http://www.wisc. edu/warf/warfmiss.html) to commercialize his discovery of a way of curing rickets – the food irradiation
process (see http://uw-food-irradiation. engr.wisc.edu/Process.html). Adolf Windaus (1876–1959), professor of chemistry and director of the chemistry laboratories at the University of Göttingen from 1915 to 1944 (http://www.museum.chemie.unigoettingen.de/windaus.htm), was later to discover and synthetically prepare vitamin D3, the component of vitamin D that is most important in preventing rickets. A brief biography of can be found among some 500 000 other entries at http://www.xrefer.com, a database providing free access to over 50 reference titles, including encyclopedias, dictionaries, thesauri and collections of quotations. For his research on sterols, especially in relation to vitamins, he received the 1928 Nobel Prize in Chemistry (http://www.nobel.se/ chemistry/ laureates/1928/windaus-bio.html). There is a detailed and well-researched article on the history of vitamin D published by the National Academy of Sciences at http://www4.nas.edu/ beyond/beyonddiscovery.nsf/web/ vitd7?OpenDocument and the University of California at Riverside has an excellent website dedicated to this hormone, with pages on its history, chemistry and biochemistry, and on nutrition and disease relating to vitamin D (http://vitamind. ucr.edu/about.html).
influence that can exacerbate disease, promote psychopathology and generally disrupt the lifestyle of its victims. In spite of the obvious impact of stress, the concept has resisted classification. Indeed, over the years, researchers have developed a reluctance to even define the construct that drives this field. As such, the development of an all-encompassing work of this magnitude is immediately confronted with the immensity of the ‘stress’ concept itself. Producing a definitive volume about an ill-defined and oft-disputed theoretical construct is a daunting task. The Encyclopedia of Stress is a bold, imaginative attempt at generating comprehensive and accessible coverage of this complex field of scientific endeavor.
The title of this review reflects an old American television show, The Wide World of Sports. The Wide World presented a cornucopia of sporting events, ranging from ski jumping to cliff diving, volleyball to water polo, ice skating to surfing. This is in essence what one takes from the Encyclopedia of Stress – an effective blend of articles spanning molecular to psychosocial orientations, written by top stress researchers from around the globe. The net effect of the volume is similar to the effect of The Wide World of Sports: readers can find a wealth of diverse and engaging articles within its covers, regardless of their specialist sphere of interest. George Fink has done an admirable job of selecting contributors and articles that encompass the scope of contemporary
Book Review
The wide world of stress Encyclopedia of Stress edited by George Fink. Academic Press, 2000. US$425.00 (xcvi + 2328 pages, three volume set) ISBN 0122267354
I have always been impressed by the many incarnations of stress research. Stress is a variable of considerable importance to all facets of psychology and physiology because it has an http://tem.trends.com
Forum
stress research. The layout and succinct tone of the articles offer a consistent and generally easy read that will be of value to both active stress researchers and the lay public. Each article includes a glossary of terms, a short synopsis, a brief text and a selective bibliography of relevant literature. The inclusion of a glossary at the beginning of each article is of substantial value for introducing concepts covered in the text and it works particularly well as an orientation for readers unfamiliar with each subject area. The editor and authors have also taken great pains to limit the use of abbreviations and jargon, ensuring that the articles are accessible to a wide audience. This is most noticeable in the articles on the biology of stress, which can often present an alphabet soup of abbreviations and acronyms. In general, the authors keep the articles concise, and thus avoid a descent into excruciating detail. As such, most articles are suitable for a range of readers. A work of this sort hinges on citing the most important contributions to the topic. The bibliographies in this volume are generally effective, listing useful references after every article. Although the format is excellent, the quality of the bibliographies varies widely. Some contributors take pains to provide a short list of approachable, general references, whereas others offer lists of primary literature contributions that might or might not be useful to the reader, depending on their level of sophistication. The former approach works better in a book like this because it provides the readership with access to literature that is geared to an incrementally more specialized audience. The primary literature citations might be less useful to readers who are not active researchers. Furthermore, primary literature citations are often biased towards the authors’ own work, providing only a partial view of the major advances in the field. There are of course some problems inherent to a volume of this magnitude, the most salient of which is the heterogeneity of its component parts. Articles are authored by a diverse group of experts, all of whom have their own particular take on the issues at hand. As a consequence, the depth of the articles varies widely. Some are fairly superficial, recapitulating common knowledge and lending little weight to what is intuitively http://tem.trends.com
TRENDS in Endocrinology & Metabolism Vol.12 No.9 November 2001
obvious; others offer levels of detail that could be lost on a lay readership. Many of the more detailed articles are essential for understanding the contemporary state of biological stress research, and the inaccessibility of the science might inhibit the ability of non-expert readers to access important concepts and approaches. Using so many contributors also causes some redundancy. For example, there are several articles on stress associated with specific disasters; these have similar content and probably could have been more effectively presented as a single, larger article. Several concepts (e.g. the organization of the hypothalamo–pituitary–adrenocortical axis) are summarized and discussed in multiple articles, with varying degrees of detail. Although useful for framing the individual author’s perspective, the repetition can be distracting. The heterogeneity of the volume also leads to some contradiction between articles. For example, some of the psychosocial perspectives offer biological background that is outdated or incorrect. These articles tend, in general, to be among the more easily accessible, and thus the non-expert reader could spend considerable time reading this volume and come away with a very superficial and perhaps erroneous understanding of the complex biology of stress. Conversely, many of the biologically oriented articles omit the psychological principles underlying the problem of stress, and others skirt around the problem of stress altogether, thus failing to grip the interest of readers who need to know biological principles underlying stress and its consequences. A final problem is one inherent to all volumes that attempt to summarize contemporary science: it is already dated. Unfortunately, the pace of modern biology exceeds the pace of book publication, and this is evident in the Encyclopedia of Stress. For example, there is little discussion of genomic approaches to stress research, nor of the advent of highthroughput approaches to design and screening of drugs that are relevant to stress and anxiety. This is an unfortunate reality of all traditionally published materials, and the editor and authors cannot be faulted on this account; it is inevitable that such volumes lag behind the current state of the art, and will lag further as time passes.
421
Nonetheless, these minor drawbacks do not dissuade me from recommending the Encyclopedia of Stress as a reference for clinicians, scientists and lay people interested in the problem of stress. The book provides an excellent overview of the current state of stress research. It is well organized and the articles are short and easily digestible. Although it makes the volume uneven as a whole, the heterogeneity of the articles has advantages: it gives the book value across the spectrum of reader sophistication and interest. There are articles in this volume that will suit the senior stress researcher and the interested lay person, the psychologist and the endocrinologist or molecular biologist. In sum, this is a work that will be a valuable addition to the libraries of researchers and practitioners working in the field of stress endocrinology, in addition to those wishing to increase their understanding of the biology and psychology of the wide, complex and multifaceted ‘world’ of stress research. James P. Herman Dept of Psychiatry, University of Cincinnati School of Medicine, Cincinnati, OH 45267-0559, USA. e-mail: [email protected]
The renin–angiotensin– aldosterone system: into the new millennium Angiotensin Protocols edited by Donna H. Wang. Humana Press, 2001, US$125.00 (xiv + 530 pages) ISBN 0896037630
The renin–angiotensin–aldosterone system (RAAS), a multifunctional physiological system, has a central role in cardio- and cerebrovascular physiology. Over the past two decades, the contribution of the RAAS to human pathophysiology and its therapeutic modulation has been extensively investigated,