Marks’ Basic Medical Biochemistry Fourth

Book Preface

It has been 4 years since the third edition was completed. The third edition retained the major pedagogic tools of the first and second editions, whereas the text had been completely revised, and certain features updated from the first edition. The fourth edition has, based on extensive reviews by both faculty and students, enhanced the features of the third edition in the following ways:

1. A major effort for this edition has been to update the patient histories to better reflect changes in treatment options for the disorders presented in this text. Every patient history has been reviewed and updated, if needed, to reflect the standard of care in 2011.
2. The “methods” notes of the third edition have been expanded such that there is at least one such note per chapter. These notes allow students to understand how biochemistry is used as a foundation for many of the laboratory tests ordered during the diagnosis of a patient.
3. Biochemical comments in several chapters have been updated to reflect recent research, particularly as it applies to signaling, type 2 diabetes, and metabolic syndrome.
4. Every chapter now contains a Table, at the end of the chapter, summarizing the diseases discussed in the chapter.
5. All chapters were reviewed and updated, where appropriate. Errors found, or pointed out by observant readers, were corrected.
6. The online question bank has been expanded by 5 questions per chapter, bringing the total number of questions (and explanations) in that bank to 468. The text itself contains 245 questions and explanations for student review.
7. Chapter references are now only available as an online supplement to the text. The references, where appropriate, are linked to the original research article in PubMed.

In revising a text geared primarily toward medical students, the authors always struggle with new advances in biochemistry and whether such advances should be included in the text. In this text, the authors include only advances that will enable the student to better relate biochemistry to medicine, and future diagnostic tools.

Although providing incomplete, but exciting, advances to graduate students is best for their education, medical students require a more directed approach, one that emphasizes how biochemistry is useful for the practice of medicine. This is a major goal of this book.

Any errors are the responsibility of the authors, and we would like to be notified when such errors are found.

We have retained the interesting names of the patients in this edition. The use of such names is meant as an educational tool and is not meant to be disrespectful to the patients or their conditions. The accompanying website for this edition of Marks’ Basic Medical Biochemistry:

A Clinical Approach contains the aforementioned additional questions for review, patient summaries (complete stories of all the patients discussed in the text), and the references for each chapter.