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The term “metabolic syndrome” denotes a clustering of traditional and emerging risk factors for atherothrombotic cardiovascular disease. Moreover, individuals who satisfy the current diagnostic criteria that define the syndrome are also at substantially increased risk of developing Type 2 diabetes—itself a coronary heart disease risk equivalent. Central obesity and insulin resistance are core features of the syndrome, which has come to be recognized as a major global threat to vascular health in the 21st century. The time is optimal for a textbook dedicated to this important issue. The metabolic syndrome has adverse implications for many aspects of vascular function ranging from endothelial function, the microvascular tree, medium-sized arteries, and large conduit vessels. Furthermore, gathering evidence suggests that interactions between small and large vessel disease may be more important than perhaps has previously been appreciated. There are fears that the successes in reducing...

Infectious diseases, also known as transmissible diseases or communicable diseases comprise clinically evident illness (i.e., characteristic medical signs and/or symptoms of disease) resulting from the infection, presence and growth of pathogenic biological agents in an individual host organism. In certain cases, infectious diseases may be asymptomatic for much or even all of their course in a given host. In the latter case, the disease may only be defined as a "disease" (which by definition means an illness) in hosts who secondarily become ill after contact with an asymptomatic carrier. An infection is not synonymous with an infectious disease, as some infections do not cause illness in a host. Infectious pathogens include some viruses, bacteria, fungi, protozoa, multicellular parasites, and aberrant proteins known as prions. These pathogens are the cause of disease epidemics, in the sense that without the pathogen, no infectious epidemic occurs. The term infectivity describ...