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42 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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What is pathology? |
The study of disease |
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What is haematology? |
The study of blood cells and the tissue they originate from |
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What is microbiology? |
The study of infection (bacterial, viral, helminth) and its treatment |
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What are the three main types of infection? |
Bacterial, viral, helminth |
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What are cytology and histopathology? |
The study of cells and their organization into tissues |
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What are molecular genetics? |
The study of genes in human cells, bacteria, and viruses |
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A patient presents with fatigue and frequent urination. What tests might be run? |
FBC to look for anaemia causing fatigue, urine culture and U&E to look for infection leading to hyperuria, glucose to look for diabetes |
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A patient presents with fatigue, frequent urination, and elevated blood glucose. What is the most probable cause? |
Diabetes mellitus |
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How would a diagnosis of diabetes mellitus be confirmed? |
Conducting a glucose tolerance test |
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What is aetiology? |
The study of causes (i.e. of disorders or conditions) |
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What might cause the insulin deficiency in diabetes mellitus? |
Autoimmune destruction of pancreatic cells, insulin resistance, excess glycemic hormones |
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What questions are asked to determine the cause of a condition? |
Is homeostasis disturbed? Has tissue been damaged? Are involved systems functioning properly? Are any pathogens present? Are any malfunctioning genes present? Homeostasis, physical damage, systems function, pathogens, genes |
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A patient presents with weight weight despite diet, puffy face and hands, trouble thinking straight, slow pulse & reflexes, and some ankle edema. What tests might be run? |
TSH to look for hypothyroidism, FBC and U&E |
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A patient presents with weight weight despite diet, puffy face and hands, trouble thinking straight, slow pulse & reflexes, and some ankle edema. What might be the cause? |
Hypothyroidism-- if T3/T4 is low then deficiency is in thyroid and being compensated for by pituitary gland |
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What is AFP? |
Alpha-fetoprotein, a tumor marker for the liver, ovaries, and testicles |
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What will happen to the AFP levels of a patient being treated for a tumor? |
They will decrease to a plateau |
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How should AFP be tested in a postoperative cancer patient? |
Using an assay with a wide analytical range over a period of time to ensure no following rises after treatment |
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What material can be tested for pathologies? |
Blood (usually serum), urine, feces, CSF, tissue |
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What are the advantages of testing blood? |
Easy to get, visits all tissues, indicates immediate status |
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What are the disadvantages of testing blood? |
Complexity, only shows a snapshot of body, exhibits diurnal variation |
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What are the advantages of testing urine? |
Easy to get, reflects production & metabolism rates of multiple systems, shows an average over time rather than a snapshot |
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What are the disadvantages of testing urine? |
Mixture of substances, only contains water-soluble metabolites which have passed through the kidneys |
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What are the advantages of testing feces? |
Easy to get, reflects GI tract health, contains fat soluble analytes |
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What are the disadvantages of testing feces? |
Mixture varies, affected heavily by recent diet, can alter analytes in transit due to bacteria |
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What are the advantages of testing CSF? |
Simple & 'clean' fluid, reflects CNS health |
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What are the disadvantages of testing CSF? |
Difficult to get, easily contaminated by blood, only relevant to specific conditions/disorders |
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What are the advantages of testing tissue? |
Locates biochemical defect precisely, links structure and function |
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What are the disadvantages of testing tissue? |
Difficult to get, defective area could be missed, only relevant to specific diseases, results are difficult to express |
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What challenges are faced in sample analysis? |
Complex mixtures of compounds, the presence of similar/confusable molecules, molecular biovariability, measurement calibration, differently-soluble molecules |
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How is wet chemistry used to measure enzyme activity? |
Reactants are supplied in excess and catalyzed by the enzyme being measured, so the amount of product is directly proportional to the amount of enzymes |
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How are immunoassays used to analyse samples? |
The "lock and key" percentage between uniquely matched antigens and antibodies indicates how many of each there are |
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What is immunoprecipitation? |
The use of targeted antibodies to create an aggregation which indicates the presence of the target antigen |
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What is a competitive immunoassay? |
A test which separates a cell's bound and unbound antigens in order to examine the percent binding by concentration of analyte |
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What is an immunometric assay? |
When analytes bind both to antigens and also to an excess of "labelling" molecules. The unbound labelling molecules are then washed away and the remainder have their signal developed and measured as a way of determining how much analyte is present |
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What analyte labelling method is the most sensitive? |
Chemiluminescence |
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What analyte labelling method is the least sensitive? |
Radioisotopes |
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Is bioluminescence or enzyme amplification the more sensitive analyte labelling method? |
Enzyme amplification |
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What is the most significant challenges to immunoassay? |
The tendency of macromolecules to change in vivo, to bind to epitopes, the Hook effect and other interference with immune binding |
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How can analyte binding be measured directly? |
Using surface plasmon resonance |
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What is surface plasmon resonance testing? |
Using light to examine the optical properties changed when analyte binds |
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How is acoustic detection used to examine analyte binding? |
The molecules which bind will reflect sound, so these waves are measured and related by location and intensity to the number of bound analytes |
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What is an example of a test measuring analytes in vivo? |
PET scans for glucose |
