Tropical Diseases: From Molecule To Bedside

Tropical diseases: From molecule to Bedside In the footsteps of Christiaan Eijkman Christiaan Eijkman received the Nobel prize for Medicine in 1929 for his discovery that beri-beri is a vitamin-deficiency disease. He had conducted his seminal research on the disease in the former Dutch East Indies between 1886 and 1898. Exactly 100 years later, two institutes of the same name and sharing similar interests continued to contribute to medical science. The Eijkman Institute for Molecular Biology in Jakarta, Indonesia and the Eijkman-Winkler Institute in Utrecht, The Netherlands started a collaboration and put this event into perspective of current knowledge on host-parasite relationships and molecular approaches of tropical diseases. Tropical diseases remain a major global concern, not only because they affect a huge part of the world population, but also because of the growing global movement of people associated with employment, tourism, and war. Recent advances in molecular biology, epitomized by the genomic revolution, have brought new promises of powerful scientific approaches to fight such diseases. The WHO¿s Advisory Committee on Health Research recognizes this fact in its recommendation on Genomics and World Health and stresses the need for concerted efforts by scientists in the developed world, where most of the recent advances in life sciences have occurred, and those in the tropical, mostly less developed countries, where such diseases are endemic. ¿Tropical Diseases: From Molecule to Bedside¿ exemplifies such an effort. This book is the result of an intensive three-day international symposium held at the Lido Lake in West Java, Indonesia, in September 2001. ¿Tropical Diseases: From Molecule to Bedside¿ covers a wide range of topics that reflect perspectives of northern and southern hemispheres. Fittingly, it defines tropical diseases in a broader-than-usual manner. For example, the book discusses traditional tropical medicine topics of infectious diseases and nutritional deficiencies. These diseases are common in the tropics, although some are associated more with poverty than with tropical living conditions. It also deals with genetic diseases and genomic issues that are truly associated with living in the tropics, e.g. the thalassemias. The thalassemias and other hemoglobinopathies confer resistance to malarial infection, and their high prevalence in the tropical belt of the world is probably the product of selection advantage during the endemic malarial past. The book begins with several papers describing the vast human genetic diversity of Southeast Asia and its relationship to several genetic disorders. These papers illustrate the future direction of genomic activities in relation to disease susceptibility and resistance. The next sections deal with malaria and four specific viral and bacterial diseases of the tropics: hepatitis B and C, tuberculosis, and leprosy. These are then followed by a section on general bacterial infection. Two papers on nutrition complete the volume. The symposium, which was the second in a series of International Eijkman Symposia, and the resultant ¿Tropical Diseases: From Molecule to Bedside¿ mark the beginning of a closer collaboration between the Eijkman Institute and the Eijkman-Winkler Centre, both established over a century ago by Christiaan Eijkman. The symposium highlighted the historical link between the two Institutes and celebrated the exceptional past achievement of medical and health research in two countries in which the scientific foundation for the study of tropical diseases was laid about two centuries ago. We hope that the International Eijkman Symposium ¿Tropical Diseases: From Molecule to Bedside¿ will serve as a catalyst for renewed international cooperation, not only between our colleagues in The Netherlands and Indonesia, but also with neighboring European and Asian countries.