Introduction to the Blood‐Brain Barrier. Methodology, Biology and Pathology . Edited by W ILLIAM M. P ARDRIDGE . (Pp. xiv+486; illustrated; £85 hardback; ISBN 0 521 581249.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1998.

The title of this volume belies its content. It is much more than an Introduction. It is virtually a current encyclopedia on the subject. The scope is comprehensive and well structured, the field being largely covered in no less than 50 chapters and 486 double-columned pages. The choice of contributors is good and the editor and publishers have cajoled them into producing chapters, not articles, of surprising comparability in style, presentation and format. Thus, the reader does not suffer the disjointed feeling caused by many multi-author texts. The quality of the chapters is generally very high and some constitute excellent contemporary reviews of the individual topics. Most have manageable lists of well chosen references. The main thread is rightly the cerebral endothelium itself in all its manifestations in vivo and in vitro. The first part deals with methodology, the second with transport biology, the third with general aspects of CNS transport (e.g. cerebrospinal fluid, membranes, circumventricular organs and development), the fourth with signal transduction} biochemical aspects, and the fifth with ‘pathophysiology in diseased states ’. Despite this tautological title, the fifth part is of particular interest to all those concerned with the many neurological conditions in which the blood-barrier (BBB) is important. I have not seen such a good collection of accounts of the BBB involvement in cerebral amyloid angiopathy, multiple sclerosis, cerebral ischaemia, AIDS, hypertension, brain tumours, traumatic brain injury, cerebral malaria and bacterial meningitis. One learns such intriguing conclusions as that the choroid plexuses and ventricular CSF are the route for dissemination of bacteria from blood to subarachnoid space in meningitis, and that the barrier opening in AIDS may be systemic rather than local in origin. The chapter on multiple sclerosis by Brosnan and Claudio is quite excellent and leaves the reader with a coherent view of the role of cells and chemical mediators in the origin and development of the local permeability increase. It gives a good basis for the supposition that measures to tighten the BBB also reduce the severity of symptoms during relapses and may slow progression of the disease. Whilst several of the contributors refer to cerebral oedema in their chapters, it would have been useful to have had a separate chapter on this general and unpleasant manifestation of severe barrier breakdown. The ethos of this book is partly explained in William Pardridge’s introductory chapter, ‘Blood-brain barrier methodology and biology’. He rightly stresses the approach to investigation of the BBB has to be multi-disciplinary, and the section on methodology covers with clarity and completeness the wide extension of methods from endothelial cell culture to brain imaging in humans with clarity and completeness. There follows in this introduction a curious scheme of 9 ‘dialectics ’ in blood-brain barrier research. The intent seems to be to demonstrate the overthrow by the editor of certain fallacious paradigms in current BBB research. All are dismissed with minimal evidence. Some of his arguments are trite and some represent his prejudices. Fortunately, the content of chapters in the book often puts the record straight, e.g. that P-glycoprotein is sited primarily at the luminal membrane of the endothelium rather than in the astrocytic foot processes. Unfortunately, in relation to transferrin, the book does not contain any review of the overwhelming evidence from Morgan and others that iron must largely be released from transferrin during its transport through the BBB, because influx of the former from blood into brain is disproportionately greater than the very small influx of the latter. These are minor aberrations in detail that are surprising from one who has contributed so much to the subject ; they apply primarily to a small section of the introduction and do not mitigate against the value of the majority of the content of this excellent book. It should play a major role in reversing the underdevelopment of research into and understanding of the BBB, these relative inferiorities also being emphasised in the Introduction. If the reader in the United Kingdom is deterred by the not unreasonable price of £85, please make use of your hard-won grant income, drop a hint to a wealthy relative or put pressure on your library to make available this volume and the invaluable information which it contains. . . .