scope:

preface

Veterinary Immunology - Principles and Practice has the simple aim of providing undergraduate veterinary students with core knowledge of veterinary immunology, while emphasizing the clinical relevance of this subject area. Veterinary students often struggle with the complexity of the immune system and find it difficult to relate immunological concepts to veterinary practice. In many universities, immunology is taught to veterinary undergraduates at a superficial level and the subject is also often delivered by basic scientists with an inappropriate focus on murine or human systems. Despite this, immunology is a key subject in the veterinary curriculum; it links together subject areas, such as biochemistry, microbiology, parasitology and pathology, with clinical medicine. One of the main clinical applications of immunology is the practice of vaccination, and all graduating veterinarians must have a solid understanding of the principles of vaccinology.

There are relatively few textbooks of veterinary immunology to support the delivery of undergraduate courses in this subject. I hope that Veterinary Immunology - Principles and Practice will fill a key niche in providing students with an affordable and practical reference that will also have relevance as they progress through a practice career. The key features of this book include:

• A sufficient level of detail of core knowledge, without this being diluted by minutiae.
• Clear definition of learning objectives and bulletpoint summaries of key points, with key words highlighted throughout the text in bold font and listed in a glossary.
• An affordable price for a full colour text supported by numerous diagrams and photographic images.
• An emphasis on clinical examples, with a series of 15 clinical case studies that present core information related to clinically significant immune-mediated diseases. This aspect is truly unique to this text and is found in no other reference book on this subject. These case studies should very clearly indicate to the student the major clinical relevance of immunology. They provide a bridge between this book and the more practitioner-orientated Clinical Immunology of the Dog and Cat. Both of these books share fundamental aspects of presentation (e.g. diagrammatic symbols), which should make it straightforward to progress from one to the other.

This book is born from the lecture course in veterinary immunology that I have delivered over the past 20 years to students at the University of Bristol. I am delighted to have had the opportunity of working with Professor Ron Schultz on this project. Ron has made insightful suggestions on the text and ensured that the content also covers the curriculum needs of students in North America. I am very grateful to Ron for sharing his vast experience in veterinary immunology and helping shape this major new resource. Both of us share a passion for this subject and the teaching of it to veterinary undergraduates. However, it is our belief that Veterinary Immunology - Principles and Practice will not only have relevance to the student market, but should serve as a simple reference for veterinarians already in practice.

I would like to acknowledge the support and enthusiasm for this project from Michael Manson and Commissioning Editor Jill Northcott. This is my fourth book for Manson Publishing, but the first truly undergraduate textbook. My thanks go to the production team of Kate Nardoni (project manager), Susan Tyler (illustrator) and Peter Beynon (copy editor) for their professional input into the finished product.