Worldwide, undergraduate medical curricula are moving towards integration of basic medical and clinical sciences to enhance student understanding of how the basic sciences underpin clinical medicine. Recent rapid progress made in the understanding of cellular mechanisms and genomics, together with developments in technical clinical procedures, means that the amount of factual knowledge required for the effective practice of medicine can be overwhelming for the undergraduate. Understanding and synthesis of this knowledge is essential for effective application to the practice of clinical medicine.

The team of clinical and scientific experts on this book integrates information from the diverse branches of medical science (such as cellular biochemistry, anatomy, physiology and genetics) with clinical examples to illustrate how dysfunction leads to disease. This book will give students of medicine a strong grounding in the basic sciences and how they inform clinical practice and medical understanding.