AIDS, drugs of abuse, and the neuroimmune axis

This book is the compilation of presentations from a conference on the titled topic. The vast majority of reports present descriptive results, but unfortunately, some of the work appears to have been done with somewhat marginal or obsolescent immunomethodology. The primary audience for this book is those interested in drug abuse and HIV infection. Neuroendocrine immunologists are a secondary audience. An unwritten rule is violated in several chapters. In one there are three times as many authors (25) as there are text pages (8)! Neuroendoimmunology is a rapidly mushrooming and highly relevant field. Many investigators, until recently, have been operating at the periphery of the immunology mainstream (not always by choice), but it is critical that this field now undergoes the same strict scrutiny that other immunobiologic subfields have and are undergoing. The implications that drugs of abuse may somehow facilitate infection with HIV is extraordinarily relevant. Unfortunately, after reading these proceedings, the topic still remains enigmatic. In fact, the most valuable chapter in this book is the last one -- a summary of the panel discussion of this conference where it is explicitl