BONE RESEARCH PROTOCOLS. Edited by M. H. Helfrich and S. H. Ralston. $125.00. Humana Press, Totowa, NJ, 2003. 448 pp. ISBN 1-58829-044-1.

R. W. Keen

This book is an addition to the series Methods in Molecular Medicine and is of direct relevance to those in rheumatological and orthopaedic research. The series has been designed to provide practical laboratory protocols for research into bone disease, thereby enabling a novice researcher to establish the protocols and techniques from scratch. The editors have assembled an internationally renowned group of authors to contribute to this important book. I was surprised, however, in this age of e-mail and computer technology, that no e-mail addresses were available for the authors, as this would have aided readers in directing any questions or queries.

The book's 31 chapters are grouped into eight sections. The first two describe techniques for osteoblast, osteocyte and osteocyte culture. Information is given for work on human tissue and animals, such as the chicken, rabbit and mouse. Section IV provides eight chapters on various techniques for histological and ultrastructural analysis. These techniques will become increasingly important, given the recent clinical interest in bone microarchitecture and structure, and in how drug treatments for osteoporosis may influence these material properties. Unfortunately, little information is provided about some of the newer techniques for the examination of bone structure and mineralization, such as fluorescence-assisted synchrotron infrared microspectroscopy, Fourier-transformed infrared spectroscopy and 31P solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. Section VII details methods of assessing bone strength in vitro and ex vivo, and I believe this section should be read in conjunction with the earlier chapters in Section IV to enable researchers to formulate ideas on disease mechanisms. No information is provided on the in vivo loading of bone, although the editors state that this may be included in future editions. Other sections of the book examine imaging techniques in rodents, and also the use of oestrogen in these animals. The final section deals with molecular analysis, looking at the extraction of nucleic acid from bone and gene expression using quantitative reverse transcriptase PCR.

Overall, this book is well written, each chapter having a consistent style and a clear outline. Although there is a large amount of textual information, the book also has a number of diagrams and figures that aid in understanding the techniques and the results obtained. A detailed reference list is provided for each chapter, and the text is well indexed, allowing the reader to quickly identify sections of interest. A list of suppliers and industrial contacts would have been useful, particularly for the novice establishing a laboratory in this field from scratch. I believe, however, that this book will be useful for researchers in the field of musculoskeletal bone research, particularly for budding MD and PhD students but also for the established researcher looking for information on new techniques.

The author has declared no conflicts of interest.





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