Main description:

This textbook focuses on the vascular biology and physiology that underlie vascular disorders in clinical medicine. Vascular biomedicine is a rapidly growing field as new molecular mechanisms of vascular health and disease are unraveled. Many of the major cardiovascular diseases including coronary artery disease, heart failure, stroke and vascular dementia are diseases of the vasculature. In addition vascular injury underpins conditions like kidney failure and cardiovascular complications of diabetes. This field is truly multidisciplinary involving scientists in many domains such as molecular and vascular biology, cardiovascular physiology and pharmacology and immunology and inflammation. Clinically, specialists across multiple disciplines are involved in the management of patients with vascular disorders, including cardiologists, nephrologists, endocrinologists, neurologists and vascular surgeons.

This book covers a wide range of topics and provides an overview of the discipline of vascular biomedicine without aiming at in-depth reviews, but rather offering up-to-date knowledge organized in concise and structured chapters, with key points and pertinent references. The structure of the content provides an integrative and translational approach from basic science (e.g. stem cells) to clinical medicine (e.g. cardiovascular disease).

The content of this book is targeted to those who are new in the field of vascular biology and vascular medicine and is ideal for medical students, graduate and postgraduate students, clinical fellows and academic clinicians with an interest in the vascular biology and physiology of cardiovascular disease and related pathologies.

Contents:

Part 1: Anatomy and Physiology.- Chapter 1: Anatomy and Pharmacology of Vessels.- Chapter 2: Physiology of Vessels.- Chapter 3: Cell Biology of Vessels.- Chapter 4: Stem Cell Biology and the Cardiovascular System.- Chapter 5: The Lymphatic System.- Chapter 6: Imaging the vascular wall; from microscope to virtual reality.- Chapter 7: Clinical Cardiovascular Imaging.- Part 2: Pharmacology and Signalling.- Chapter 8: Vascular Signalling.- Chapter 9: Vasoactive Peptides: Renin Angiotensin System.- Chapter 10: Aldosterone.- Chapter 11: Nitric Oxide.- Chapter 12: Reactive Oxygen Species.- Chapter 13: TGF-beta in Vascular Pathobiology.- Chapter 14: miRNA and IncRNA in the Vascular System.- Chapter 15: Microparticles and Exosomes in Cell-Cell Communication.- Part 3: Pathophysiology of Vascular Diseases.- Chapter 16: Genomics of Hypertension.- Chapter 17: Endothelial Dysfunction.- Chapter 18: Vascular Remodelling.- Chapter 19: Vascular Stiffness.- Chapter 20: Atherosclerosis.- Chapter 21: Inflammation and Immunity in Vascular Diseases.- Chapter 22: Diagnostic and therapeutic targeting of inflammation.- Chapter 23: Perivascular Adipose Tissue.- Chapter 24: Vascular Biology of Chemotherapeutic Drugs.- Chapter 25: Coronary Microvascular Disease.- Chapter 26: Cerebral Small Vessel Disease and Vascular Cognitive Impairment: Preclinical Aspects.- Chapter 27: Ethnicity and Cardiovascular Disease.- Part 4: Clinical Aspects.- Chapter 28: Epidemiology of Vascular Diseases.- Chapter 29: Early Vascular Ageing and Healthy Vascular Ageing.- Chapter 30: Biomarkers of Cardiovascular Disease.- Chapter 31: Hypertension.- Chapter 32 Diabetic Retinopathy.- Chapter 33: Ischaemic Heart Disease.- Chapter 34: Pre-eclampsia.- Chapter 35: Stable Coronary Artery Syndromes.- Chapter 36: Heart Failure: HFrEF.- Chapter 37 Heart Failure: HFpEF.- Chapter 38 Renal Disease.- Chapter 39 Obesity.- Chapter 40 Diabetes.- Chapter 41 Pulmonary.- Hypertension.- Chapter 42 Cerebral Small Vessel disease and Vascular Cognitive Impairment.- Chapter 43 Stroke.- Chapter 44 Peripheral Vascular Disease.- Chapter 45 Vascular malformations and tumours.