Comprehensive Virology

The time seems ripe for a critical compendium of that segment of the biological universe we call viruses.

This new Edition of A Practical Guide to Clinical Virology has been thoroughly updated and is a practical, highly illustrated, quick reference guide to clinical virology. It brings together the essentials of the subject in a entertaining and informative style, describing in turn the clinical features, the symptoms and signs of each of the viral diseases, as well as summarising the epidemiology, laboratory diagnosis and therapy in each case. This book also includes general chapters such as classification, diagnosis of infection, antiviral drugs, vaccines and different clinical syndromes. Features include: hapter summaries for quick reference Cartoon illustrations New chapters on Human Herpes Virus 6 Hepatitis C Hepatitis E Emerging Viruses Polyoma viruses Comprehensive coverage Clear and concise format Each chapter is easy to read and well organised, ensuring that this is an invaluable textbook for all medical, biomedical, microbiology and applied biology students. In addition, it will provide an excellent reference for nurses, occupational health and infection control departments, public health and diagnostic laboratories.

This book highlights key findings generated during the past years from the main disciplines that constitute Physical Virology, from theoretical physics and simulations to material sciences and vaccines development to structural biology. Each chapter is written by world-class scientists from these areas and is a comprehensive review of where this field stands, as well as the future of Physical Virology. The diversity in the formal training of these scientists results in solving common problems using very distinct approaches, which can produce surprising findings. The multi- and interdisciplinary nature of this field has created a remarkable community that aims at understanding how viruses work and how they can be used in material sciences, chemistry, and biomedicine. Furthermore, the development of Physical Virology has resulted in technological advances that have shaped other fields; for example, it would be impossible to think about the development of Cryo-EM to solve the structure of complex viruses with atomic resolution without the contribution of scientists that created the field of Physical Virology. In the past decade, there has been a great success in the generation of viral systems that can encapsulate drugs, non-viral genetic material, or nanoparticles, as well as in the chemical and genetical modification of virions. Without any doubt in the immediate future, some of these technologies will jump from the bench to the market, creating a revolution in translational and biomedical sciences. The book provides key perspectives for the field, derived from expert´s opinions.