This volume is the first comprehensive treatise on homocysteine to treat the topic from the basic biochemical, metabolic, genetic, and dietary determinants to disease relationships, including concepts of pathogenesis. In addition, the public health implications of these associations are described. To date, evidence strongly supports the hypotheses that Hyperhomocysteinemia is a strong independent determinant of vascular disease and Many cases of hyperhomocysteinemia are amenable to homocysteine-lowering treatment with B-vitamins.£/LIST£ The strength of this evidence is prompting discussion of large-scale homocysteine-lowering interventions. Against this background of growing recognition of the importance of homocysteine as a factor in coronary artery disease, cerebrovascular disease, stroke, and peripheral vascular disease, the editors conceived of a state-of-the-art monograph on homocysteine and its relationships to disease. The contributors would be those scientists who, in fact, had written the history of this field of study over the past third of a century. The editors invited the leading investigators in the world to contribute chapters in their own areas of expertise to this monograph and to deliver those papers at the first International Meeting on Homocysteine in Ireland, which has emerged as an important study center and where the first cases of homocystinuria were reported more than three decades ago.
