TY - CHAP M1 - Book, Section TI - Preface A1 - Kaushansky, Kenneth A1 - Levi, Marcel PY - 2017 T2 - Williams Hematology Hemostasis and Thrombosis AB - Hemostasis and thrombosis are two sides of a finely balanced system of blood cells and proteins that protects the vasculature from injury-induced hemorrhage. Prior to the development of systematic farming and ranching, with its attendant dietary changes, and against a history of physical activity, hunting, and fighting, human evolution selected for a homeostatic system that favored blood clotting over hemorrhage. However, with current sedentary lifestyles and the “advent” of the “Western diet,” hypertension, the ability to smoke two packs of cigarettes a day (something next to impossible when a smoker had to “roll their own”), and most recently, convenience foods that allow “super-sizing” dietary calories, sodium, and fats, atherosclerotic damage to the vasculature has, in many persons, turned physiologic hemostasis into pathologic thrombosis, responsible for more deaths in the Western world than any other category of disease. Based on careful descriptions of congenital bleeding and clotting disorders and biochemical fractionation of blood coagulation proteins and cells, our understanding of the molecular mechanisms of physiologic and pathologic blood coagulation is quite advanced. From such studies have come targets for new therapies that can intervene in pathologic thrombosis or help repair the blood coagulation system in states of pathologic hemorrhage. SN - PB - McGraw-Hill Education CY - New York, NY Y2 - 2024/03/29 UR - accesscardiology.mhmedical.com/content.aspx?aid=1148370282 ER -