Theme 2 - Genetic and environmental cause of disease: Part 1 Flashcards
What is an atheroma?
Intimal lesion that protrudes into a vessel wall. It consists of a raised lesion with a soft core of lipid and is covered by a fibrous capsule
What does the fibrous cap of an atheroma consist of?
Smooth muscle cells, macrophages, foam cells, lymphocytes, collagen, elastin
What does the necrotic centre of an atheroma consist of?
Cell debris, cholesterol crystals, foam cells, calcium
What are foam cells?
Lipid macrophages that contain cholesterol
What is the inner most and middle layer of an artery?
inner most - endothelium
middle - smooth muscle
Which vessels are commonly affected by atheroma?
- bifurcations (sites of turbulent flow)
- abdominal aorta
- coronary arteries
- popliteal arteries
- carotid vessels
What are the 9 risk factors for HDL?
- age
- male gender
- family history
- genetic abnormalities
- hyperlipidaemia (LDL:HDL)
- hypertension
- cigarette smoking
- diabetes
- C-reactive proteins
How does atherosclerosis start?
-chronic inflammatory response to damage or injury to the inner layer of an artery
What can cause damage to the inner layer of an artery?
- High BP
- high cholesterol
- an irritant, such as nicotine
- certain diseases e.g diabetes
What is the response to injury hypothesis?
- Chronic endothelial injury
- Endothelial dysfunction (e.g increased permeability, leukocyte adhesion) and emigration
- Smooth muscle emigration from media to intima. Macrophage activation
- Macrophages and smooth muscle cells engulf lipid
- Smooth muscle proliferation, collagen and other ECM deposition, extracellular lipid
What are the two events leading up to atherosclerosis?
- Fatty streak
- earliest lesion
- composed of lipid filled foamy macrophages
- begin as minute flat yellow spots that coalesce into streaks
- not all fatty streaks are destined to progress to atheromatous plaques - Atherosclerotic plaque
- intimal thickening and lipid accumulation
- thrombus on plaque appears red
What are the sequelae of atherosclerosis?
- Rupture, ulceration or erosion
- haemorrhage into plaque
- atheroembolism
- aneurysm formation
What is a thrombus?
- A solid mass of blood constituents formed within the vascular system
- a blood clot inside a vein or artery
What is the sequence of events from an initial lesion to a complicated lesion?
- Initial lesion
- Fatty streak
- Intermediate lesion
- Atheroma
- Fibroatheroma
- Complicated lesion
What is stasis and turbulence?
both abnormal blood flow
stasis - reduced blood flow
turbulence - increased flow
What are the 3 causes of thrombosis?
Vircows triad
- abnormal blood flow
- endothelial injury
- hypercoagulability
What is coagulation?
Blood clotting
What is claudication?
pain on walking due to reduced blood flow to the legs
What are the differences between arterial thrombosis and venous thrombosis?
Think about mechanism, location, diseases, composition, treatment
Arterial thrombosis:
- typically from rupture of atheromatous plaque
- left heart chambers, arteries
- ishaemic stroke, claudication
- mainly platelets
- anti-platelet agents (clopidogrel)
Venous thrombosis:
- typically from combination of factors from Virchow triad
- muscle and valves of veins
- DVT, PE
- mainly fibrin
- anticoagulants (heparin, warfarin)
What is polycythemia?
Increase in number of red blood cells in the body. Increase in number causes blood to be thicker, which can cause clots
What are the differences between clots and thrombus ?
Clots:
- platelets not involved
- occurs outside vessel
- red
- gelatinous
- not attached to vessel wall
Thrombus:
- platelets involved
- occurs only inside vessel
- red (venous), pale (arterial)
- firm
- attached to vessel wall
What is an embolus?
- A thrombus that breaks loose and travels from one location in the body to another
- becomes lodged in a vessel and blocks its lumen
- most common is a PE derived from DVT
What are some sequelae of thrombosis?
- occlusion of vessel- causing ischaemia or infarction
- dissolution
- incorporation into vessel wall
- recanalisation
- embolisation
What is hypoxia?
When the oxygen supply to tissues is impaired. Other metabolites e.g glucose are still available
What is ischaemia?
- the interruption / disturbance of blood flow to cells and tissues
- this reduces oxygen supply AND metabolites
What is individual cell death in ischaemic injury called?
necrosis
What is infarction?
Ischaemia (inadequate blood supply) leading to cell death (necrosis)
What are the mechanisms of ischaemic cell injury?
- decrease ATP
- increase lactate
- failure of Na pump –> accumulation of Na+
- membrane damage
- leakage of intracellular proteins (creatine kinase, troponin, transaminases)
- failure of Ca pump –> accumulation of Ca2+
- decrease protein synthesis
So how can we detect ischaemia?
- lactate levels
- intracelular proteins
What are the 6 causes of ischaemia?
- Vascular occlusion (atherosclerosis, thrombosis, embolism, hyper viscosity)
- Vasospasm
- Vascular damage
- Extrinsic compression e.g tumour
- Mechanical interruption e.g torsion
- Hypoperfusion e.g cardiac failure