Hartmut Krauss, Albert Weber, Max Appel, Burkhard Enders, Henry D. Isenberg, Hans Gerd Schiefer, Werner Slenczka, Alexander von Graevenitz, and Horst Zahner. Zoonoses: infectious diseases transmissible from animals to humans, 3rd edition

Abstract

The third edition of this book, which was first published in 1986, appeared recently, and fortunately it is now—for the first time—available in both its original German version (H. Krauss, A. Weber, M. Appel, B. Enders, H. D. Isenberg, H. G. Schiefer, W. Slenczka, A. von Graevenitz und H. Zahner. Zoonosen: Von Tier zu Mensch übertragbare Infektionskrankheiten (3. vollständig überarbeitete und aktualisierte Auflage). Deutscher Ärzte-Verlag, Köln, 2004, 605 pages, ISBN 3-7691-0406-4) and in English (ASM Press, Washington, D.C., 2003, 474 pages, ISBN: 1-55581-236-8). As the English version predates its German cousin by about a year, the contents of the two books are not completely identical but sufficiently similar to justify them being reviewed together. Despite no fewer than nine authors—veterinarians, physicians, and microbiologists—this book is very up-to-date: it includes chapters on the SARS-associated coronavirus and on the Nipah virus in South-East Asia, and covers the emergence of the West Nile virus in the New World up to November 2002 (English edition) and the end of 2003 (German edition), as well as the importation of monkeypox into the United States in May 2003. Thus it promises to remain a useful resource for several years to come (nevertheless, I hope it will be so successful that further editions will be published at regular intervals). Four chapters cover viral (including prions), bacterial, fungal and parasitic zoonoses. The microbiology, epidemiology, diagnosis, including differential diagnosis, clinical management, chemotherapy and prophylaxis of each zoonotic disease is covered. Topics include the roles zoonotic agents play as emerging and re-emerging agents, as a cause of opportunistic infections, in the context of food-borne illness and xenotransplantation, and as potential biowarfare agents. Several appendices contain useful reference lists e.g. of animal bite infections, of zoonoses transmitted from various types of animals, and of notifiable zoonotic diseases (for the German-speaking countries and the US respectively). Each virological chapter ends by giving details of published relevant PCRs. The authors themselves clearly acknowledge the limitations of such information and stress the importance of consulting the original papers. Whilst some might doubt the usefulness of including such information on diagnostic assays, I personally feel that in a field with very little standardisation, this is indeed worthwhile. Taking it even further, I would like to suggest that sources for other (sometimes hard to come by) reagents such as diagnostic antigens and monoclonal antibodies etc. be included, and not just for the viruses! The book contains few mistakes. I noticed a few factual errors in my own field, virology and immunisation, and this can probably be extrapolated to the other groups of agents. Examples include the repeated mentioning of “wild boars” in Australia (when domestic pigs are intended) and the listing of the neurotropic French Dakar vaccine against yellow fever (the use of which has been abandoned in favour of the 17D vaccine strain). There are also several spelling errors and other mistakes in the citations that should be corrected; however it is rather impressive how the authors have managed to include the most relevant recent literature. On the whole, these are minor inaccuracies and probably unavoidable in a volume such as this; they cannot detract from the book’s many virtues. In summary, the book does not cover the broad subject of zoonoses in sufficient detail for everybody’s needs. It does, however, provide much timely and important information to make it an extremely useful source of knowledge in an area few are truly familiar with. Any doctor may be faced with a patient suffering from a zoonotic infection; in most cases, this book will provide the information he needs. As a reference, it is suitable for medical and veterinary doctors as well as colleagues in public health and in laboratories. Rather than depth, it is the width that impresses, and the inclusion of valuable information from many different fields: veterinary and human medicine, laboratory sciences, ecology, chemotherapy and immunisation. For readers who may be knowledgeable in one or some of these areas but not in the others, this is extremely useful as it opens up new aspects—not least thanks to the concise references that are worth pursuing if one wants or needs to go beyond what is included here. If I may suggest improvements for future editions, more distribution and incidence maps and more tables or figures illustrating e.g. phylogenetic relationships would be useful. I also miss a chapter entitled something like “Approaches to the differential diagnosis of zoonotic infections”; this should suggest practicable and economical strategies for the diagnostic management of patients presumably suffering from a zoonotic infection.