Immunotoxicity, Immune Dysfunction, and Chronic Disease

Rodney R. Dietert is Professor of Immunotoxicology at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY whose interests focus on the prevention of chronic diseases via patterns that first emerge in children.  Dietert’s recent books include: Strategies For Protecting Your Child's Immune System (World Scientific, Singapore, Hackensack, NJ, 2010) and Immunotoxicity Testing (as Editor) (Springer, NY, 2010). He previously directed Cornell's Program on Breast Cancer and Environmental Risk Factors and the Institute for Comparative and Environmental Toxicology and served as a Senior Fellow in Cornell’s Center for the Environment.  Dietert recently served on panels for the Institute of Medicine (Agent Orange), the WHO (Immunotoxicology Risk Assessment) and the EPA (Trichloroethylene).    Robert W. Luebke is an immunotoxicologist with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in Research Triangle Park, NC whose research is focused on the consequences of exposure to environmental chemicals on immune system homeostasis and resistance to infectious disease, and the development of alternative testing methods for high throughput screening of chemicals for immune system toxicity.  He has authored numerous book chapters on immunotoxicology and immunotoxicology methods and served as senior editor of the third edition of Immunotoxicology and Immunopharmacology (CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL, 2007). Recent service activities include membership on a core writing group for the WHO Harmonized Immunotoxicity Risk Assessment Guidelines and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Technical Guidance 443, the  Extended One-Generation Reproductive Toxicity Study.

Introduction to Immunotoxicity.- The Environment-Immune Route to Chronic Disease.- Asthma and Respiratory Allergies.- Cutaneous Allergies.- Food Allergies.- Factors Involved in Onset of Type1 Diabetes.- Rheumatoid Arthritis.- Environment, Immune Dysfunction and Systemic Lupus Erythematosus.- Multiple Sclerosis, Alzheimer’s Disease and Inflammation: A  Hypothetical View.- Immune Dysfunction in Autism Spectrum Disorders.- Atherosclerosis and Inflammatory Heart Disease.- Inflammatory Bowel Disease and Celiac Disease: Environmental Risks Factors and Consequences.- COPD and Other Inflammatory Diseases of the Lung:  Focus on AhR signaling.- Environment, the Immune System, and Depression: An Integrative Review and Discussion of the Infection-Defense Hypothesis.- Cancer – Childhood Acute Leukemia.- Environmental Toxicants and Susceptibility to Infection.- Reducing the Prevalence of Immune-Based Chronic Disease.

“The format of each chapter, starting with an abstract and key points on the first page followed by the body of the text, facilitates isolated reading of each chapter without the requirement for prior knowledge of the rest of the book … . The editors and contributors have created an interesting textbook which, as well as informing the immunotoxicologist, would be at home in the library of a range of institutes investigating any of the many diseases covered.” (Halima Moncrieffe, Immunology News, February, 2013)