Biochemical causes

Hultman, E. Sjoholm, H. (1986). Biochemical causes of fatigue. In Human Muscle Power (Jones, N.L., McCarmey, N., McComas, A.J., eds.), pp. 215-238, Human Kinetics, Champaign, IL. 

If the enzyme lesion occurs early in the pathway prior to the formation of porphyrinogens (eg, enzyme 3 of Figure 32-9, which is affected in acute intermittent porphyria), ALA and PBG will accumulate in body tissues and fluids (Figure 32-11). Glinically, patients complain of abdominal pain and neuropsychiatric symptoms. The precise biochemical cause of these symptoms has not been determined but may relate to elevated levels of ALA or PBG or to a deficiency of heme. 

Figure 32-11. Biochemical causes of the major signs and symptoms of the porphyrias.

Disorders of the brain affect a very large number of people. It is estimated that about one in five women and one in seven men in the UK suffer from mental illness. The biochemical causes include the following ... 

The biochemical cause(s) of erectile dysfunction is not known but one possibility is a low concentration of cyclic GMP in the smooth mnscle. On the basis of the principle of the regulation of second messengers see Chapter 12 and Box 12.2, the following might be responsible for a low... 

The various hypotheses that have been advanced regarding the biochemical cause of mania mainly centre on the idea that it is due to a relative excess of noradrenaline, and possibly dopamine, with deficits also arising in the availability of 5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT) and acetylcholine. This simplistic view forms the basis of the amine theory of affective disorders... 

In some disorders there is a clearly recognisable phenotype, often a named syndrome that has later been linked to a specific biochemical cause. However, once the biochemical basis of such a syndrome has been recognised it often becomes apparent that milder variants, formes frustes showing only some of the features of the classical syndrome, are relatively common. The diagnostic assay then changes from being a rarely used confirmatory test to one that is requested relatively frequently for a variety of less specific indications. The same phenomenon is seen where the abnormal phenotype develops progressively, as in most of the lysosomal disorders, and a bat-... 

Pyruvate dehydrogenase deficiency is the most common biochemical cause of congeni... 

Alzheimer s Disease and Stroke Possible Biochemical Causes and Treatment Strategies... 

In some African and Polynesian populations, cardiovascular diseases often have different biochemical causes than in Caucasians. Different drug responses to these diseases may therefore have pathological rather than pharmacogenetic causes (22,23). 

While the focus of work in the past century has been on the biological and biochemical causes of disease and its treatment, there is another aspect that has received little attention. This is the electrophysiological aspect, and it suffers much from the poor development of theory at a biomolecular level. There is also a further aspect to disease, the psychosomatic. There is much evidence that one can think one s self ill and think one s self well. What is not yet understood is the relation between the electrochemical aspects of disease and the psychosomatic. Are they two sides of the same coin Should not their study be greatly intensified ... 

Fig. 21.12 Biochemical causative mechanisms of hepatocellular degeneration and cell death due to oxidative stress and disruptions of cellular calcium homoeostasis (similar to a vicious circle)...

In the field of medicinal chemistry, scientists identify, synthesize, develop, and study chemicals to use for diagnostic tools and pharmaceuticals. Pharmacology is the study of how chemical substances interact with living systems. As biological knowledge has increased, the biochemical causes of many diseases have been determined and the field of pharmacology has grown tremendously. 

---