Book description
Smoking causes and contributes to a large number of human diseases, yet
due to the large number of potentially hazardous compounds in cigarette
smoke -- almost 5,000 chemicals have been identified, establishing the
link between smoking and disease has often proved difficult.
This unbiased and scientifically accurate overview of current knowledge
begins with an overview of the chemical constituents in cigarette smoke,
their fate in the human body, and their documented toxic effects on
various cells and tissues. Recent results detailing the many ways
components of cigarette smoke adversely affect human health are also
presented, highlighting the role of smoking in cardiovascular,
respiratory, infectious and other diseases. A final chapter discusses
current strategies for the treatment and prevention of smoking-induced illness.
Despite the obvious importance of the topic, this is the first
comprehensive reference on tobacco smoke toxicity, making for essential
reading for all toxicologists and healthcare professionals dealing with
smoking-related diseases. David Bernhard gained his PhD degree in
microbiology at the University of Innsbruck, Faculty of Medicine, and
the Tyrolean Cancer Research Institute, Austria. After a scientific stay
abroad he served as a postdoc at the Institute of Biomedical Aging
Research of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, by which time he was
already focusing on the effects of cigarette smole on the cardiovascular
system. Following another postdoc period at the Institute for
Pathophysiology of the Medical University in Innsbruck, he became head
of the university's cardiac surgery research laboratory, and expanded
his research towards a more application-oriented field. Currently Dr.
Bernhard is head of the cardiac surgery research laboratory at the
Medical University of Vienna, Austria, where his major fields of
interest are the pathophysiological understanding of smoking and metal
ion-induced atherosclerosis, as well as the search for natural compounds
in the treatment of cardiovascular dieseases, while he has recently
started work on tissue engineering projects in the cardiovascular
setting.
