Medical Science Books Medical Book Review:

     Oxygen/Nitrogen Radicals: Lung Injury and Disease (Editors: Vallyathan, Castranova, and Shi, Marcel Dekkar, 2004) is a 529 page book by leading authors in the field. The book consists of 20 chapters. A quick glance at the chapter titles enables the reader to familiarize with contents; it also shows that this expansive topic has been filtered and presented here through the lens of the occupational safety and health professionals, as represented by the editors of the polygraph. Seven chapters have been authored or coauthored by the editors. Half of the chapters have been written by teams of two authors. Five chapters were written by one (not the same) author; 3 chapters by 3 authors; one chapter by 4 authors, and one chapter by 10 authors. Readability of the book would improve if the chapters were organized under sections and the content layout be made more reader-friendly. The current layout may reflect the relative autonomy of the authors in choosing their topics and titles and a pseudorandom ordering of the chapters.

     The chapters can be loosely classified into 4 main categories: basic science, translational, lung injury due to inhaled particles and gases, and clinical entities. ROS/RNS generation and reactions in the lung (Ch. 1), Oxidative stress in health and disease (Ch. 2), ROS in signaling (Ch. 3), hyperoxia (Ch. 18) are basic in nature. ROS/RNS in lung inflammation (Ch. 4), Pulmonary complications of chronic granulomatous disease (Ch. 5), Vanadium and Chromium toxicity (Ch. 19), and ROS and carcinogenesis (Ch. 20) are translational. Lung injury due to inhaled particles and gases cover chapters 6 through 13. Individual clinical conditions, such as COPD, ARDS, and asthma, in which ROS/RNS has been shown to play a role in pathogenesis, are served in Ch. 14-17.

     The book starts with a chapter on ROS/RNS generation and reactions in the lung. This chapter is an excellent review of the topic and immediately sets the backdrop for the rest of the book. Major reactions of ROS and RNS are presented. Readers will find many bits of interesting information, including the CO2 mediated reactions of peroxynitrite that could be more relevant to biological systems. The theme is continued in the next chapter, touching on antioxidant defenses, among many other things.

     A talk on ROS is incomplete, unless the phagocyte superoxide generating system (phagocyte oxidase or phox) is adequately addressed. In chapter 5, Barnard Babior, a leading authority in the field, succinctly presents the latest and the best on chronic granulmatous disease and the NADPH oxidase system.

     Chapter 3 is important to understand the role of ROS as signal transduction molecules. Classically, ROS has been thought of as injuring agents; while NO (an RNS) has been considered a physiological signaling molecule. This chapter presents evidence that ROS are physiological signals for a variety of transduction pathways, for example PI3K, NF-kB, AP-1, MAPK, and p53.

     The “inhalation” chapters (6-13) would leave anyone little air for breathing: the scope and depth of material covered in these chapters testify to the true professionalism of the authors. Asbestos, silica, smoke, airborne particles of pollution, ozone – nothing is left out. Andrew Churg addresses the basic cellular responses to smoke and air pollution of epithelial cells in Chapter 10. This is continued in the next chapter by Irfan Rahman talking in depth about lipid peroxidation, DNA oxidative damage, and epigenetic oxidative damage (histone acetylation/deacetylation, DNA methylation) by cigarette smoke. Several highly informative schemes are presented as flow-charts that help to capture the information in a nutshell. The 4-university, 10-author, transatlantic chapter covers the air pollution effects on respiratory health. It convincingly shows that particulate matters elicit inflammatory responses through ROS generation and oxidation of biomolecules. The ozone chapter 13 is large enough to fill the cerebrospheric hole in the knowledge of the general reader. It talks about cytokines, lung inflammation, cell adhesion molecules, oxidants and antioxidants. The reader will have no doubt that although two (O2) is essential for life, three (O3) is not better.