Disease biochemical basis

There are many excellent texts on nutrition. This chapter, therefore, focuses not on nutrition per se but on how biochemistry helps us understand well established and less well established aspects of nutrition and how such knowledge fits in with other subjects discussed in this text. There is now considerable medical and lay interest in what is meant by healthy and unhealthy diets. Nutrition has become a major issue in the medical sciences and in clinical practice. It is also of concern to politicians, particularly in the link between nutrition and Western diseases such as cardiovascular disease, obesity, cancer and neurological problems. In this chapter an attempt is made to provide a biochemical basis for discussion of nutrition and development of these conditions. To this end, biochemical explanations for nutritional advice and the recommendations from national bodies are provided. Similarly, explanations for the recommendations designed for different populations, different conditions and activities (physical and mental activity, the elderly, the young, during pregnancy and space flight) are discussed. Finally, the biochemistry of malnutrition, undemutrition and ovemutrition is discussed. 

Perhaps it is not surprising to find that our knowledge of how the brain works and where defects that lead to abnormal behaviour can arise is so deficient. The approach to understanding the biochemical basis of psychiatric disease is largely based on the assumption that the brain is chemically homogeneous, which is improbable Nevertheless, there has been some success in recent years in probing the changes that may be... 

Wieser, H. and Koehler, P. (2008). The biochemical basis of celiac disease. Cereal Chem. 85(1),... 

Research continues in an effort to gain a more thorough understanding of how lipoproteins arc synthesized how lipids are arranged and combined with proteins to form cell membranes what specific role lipids play in transport across cell membranes how hormones act to regulate lipid metabolism, the biochemical basis of such abnormal lipid metabolic states as Gaucher s disease. Nieniann-Pick s disease, etc. how lipids per sc permeate cell membranes anil huw many phenotypic lipoproteins occur in serum. 

A large number of diseases are due to either overproduction or underproduction of hormones, or to insensitivity of target tissues to circulating hormones. Knowledge of hormone biosynthesis, secretion, and interaction with target cells is essential to an understanding of the biochemical basis of these disorders. 

Know the biochemical basis and signs and symptoms of disease associated with hormone over- or underproduction, such as Addison s, Cushing s and Graves disease. 

Faurbye, A. (1970). The structural and biochemical basis of movement disorders in treatment with neuroleptic drugs and in extrapyramidal diseases. Comprehensive Psychiatry, 11, 205-225. 

It is estimated that at least 15 million persons in the United States have osteoporosis. The sites of osteoporotic fractures most commonly are the vertebra and hip, though the forearm and wrist are also involved. A bone fracture in an elderly person is imdesirable because it leads to periods of disability. In addition, about 10% of the fractures of osteoporosis are fatal. Osteoporosis results from the continued activity of osteoclasts but reduced activity of osteoblasts. Hence, the disease involves a lack of coordination in the rates of bone resorption and formation. The biochemical basis for this imbalance is not clear because of the complexity of the mechanisms controlling the activities of bone cells (and of all other cells). At least a dozen growth factors are used to regulate bone cells. 

The authors gratefully acknowledge the contribution by Drs, John Albers and Paul Bachorik on which portions of this chapter are based. Additional portions have been adapted from Rifai N, Kwiterovich PO Jr. Disorders of lipid and lipoprotein metabolism in children and adolescents. In Soldin SJ, Rifai N, Hick JMB eds. Biochemical basis of pediatric diseases, 3rd ed. Washington DC AACC Press, 1998. 

Woolley, D. W., The Biochemical Basis of Psychoses or the Serotonin Hypothesis about Mental Disease, John Wiley Sons, New York, 1962. 

The basic concept upon which ALA-PDT is based was conceived as we studied the biochemical basis for the group of metabolic diseases known as the porphyrias [43]. Some of the porphyrias are associated with a generalized photosensitization which is caused by the accumulation of specific types of porphyrin in the blood and/or tissues, where each type of porphyrin accumulates as the result of a specific abnormality in the biosynthetic pathway for heme. Although at that time it was generally believed that the expression of such abnormalities was restricted to the liver and the hemopoietic system (those tissues which synthesize large amounts of heme), it was obvious that all nucleated cells must have at least some capacity to synthesize heme because they all use heme-containing enzymes for the tricarboxylic acid cycle. 

Myasthenia Gravis and Related Disorders Biochemical Basis for Disease of the Neuromuscular Junction, ed.M.A. Agius, D.P. Richman and R.H. Fairclough in Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Vol. 998, New York Academy of Sciences, 2003... 

Oxidant stress has been widely implicated as a mechanism of disease, but clinical trials of antioxidants have failed to include a biochemical basis for dose selection or patient inclusion. Commonly employed in vivo indices of lipid peroxidation are constrained... 

Mitochondrial genesis of lipofuscin became evident from electron microscope studies of brain, neuronal tissue culture and heart (Glees et al. 1974). Glees and Hasan (1976) considered mitochondria to be most sensitive organelles, which due to ageing, disease or stress will give rise to lipofuscin formation. The biochemical basis of lipofuscin, ceroid, and age pigment-like fluorophores was reviewed by Yin (1996). 

---