Week 1 - Cell injury Flashcards
What is disease a result of ?
Intrinsic or extrinsic abnormalities or a combination of both
How does all diseases start?
Cell alterations
What happens to cells during periods of mild change?
They are able to maintain homeostasis
During increased severe changes what happens to cells?
Able to undergo physiological and morphological adaptations to remain viable
When a cell can no longer adapt to changed conditions what happens?
Start to show reversible or irreversible cell damage
What are the causes of injury?
- Hypoxia
- Physical agents
- Chemical agents and drugs
- Microorganisms
- Immune mechanism
- Dietary insufficiencies and deficiency
- Genetic abnormalities
Describe hypoxia
O2 deprivation leading to decreased aerobic oxidative respiration
How long can a cell survive hypoxia?
Varies depending on cell type - fibroblasts can last comparatively ages compared to neurones
What are the causes of hypoxia?
- Hypoxaemia
- Anaemia
- CO poisoning
- Histiocytic
Explain what hypoxaemia is
Low arterial content of O2 due to decreased inspired PPO2
Describe how anaemia can cause hypoxia
Decreased ability of haemoglobin to carry O2 leading to reduced O2 delivery to tissue
Describe what is meant by histiocytic causes of hypoxia
Inability of the cells to use O2 due to disabled oxidative phosphorylation
What may cause histiocytic hypoxia? Describe the mechanism
Posoining with the cyanide ion as this binds with the mitachondiral cytochrome oxidase and blocks OP
Why does ischaemia or decreased venous return causes effects much quicker than hypoxia?
Reduced delivery of both O2 and metabolic substrates. In hypoxia glycolytic respiration can continue but in ischaemia and lack of venous return respiration is stopped completely apart from stored fuel eg skeletal muscle
Give some examples of physical agents that can cause hypoxia
Direct trauma, extremes of temperature, sudden changes in atmospheric pressure, electrical currents and radiation
Give some examples of chemical agents that can cause hypoxia
Glucose or salts in hypotonic solution O2 at high conc Pesticides Insecticides Asbestos Alcohol Drugs
What are the 4 structures in cells that are vulnerable to damage during cell injury?
Cell membrane
Nucleus
Proteins ( cytoskeleton and enzymes)
Mitachondria
What is the sign of reversible hypoxic injury?
Oncosis - cell swelling
Describe how oncosis comes about?
Reduced O2 supply leads to reduced production of ATP by OP in mitachondria. Only a small drop is necessary for NA+ pump to stop working leading to influx of Na+ ions in and water follows.
What happens to intracellular Ca levels during cell injury ?
Increase
What happens to the pH of a cell during cell injury? What effect does this have on cellular components?
Decreased pH due to increased reliance on glycolytic respiration producing lactic acid. This affects enzymes and causes chromatin to clump.
What is activated by the fall in pH during hypoxic injury?
Heat shock stress response
What happens to the ER during reversible hypoxic cell damage? What is the effect of this ?
Ribsomes detach from ER leading to disrupted protein synthesis and intracellular accumulations of substance
What is the hallmark of irreversible damage to cells?
Loss of plasma membrane integrity
Describe the changes to the membrane and its effect during cell damage
Disturbances in membrane integrity leads to increase permeability to ions and other substances. This leads to a huge increase in Ca levels from extracellular, ER and mitachondria.
What is the effect of huge increases in Ca levels in a damaged cell?
Activation of potent enzymes such at ATPases, phospholipases, proteases and endonucleases.
What sign of membrane integrity loss can be seen under a microscope?
Blebbing
The leakage of enzymes is useful for what? Name two enzymes that may be lost when hepatocytes are damaged?
Enzymes and intracellular substances can be measured for diagnosis
AST and ALT
What is ischaemic reperfusion injury?
When blood flows back to an area of ischaemia but not yet necrotic the injury is worse than if no blood flows back.
What are the causes of ischaemia reperfusion injury?
Increased production of radicals with reoxygenation
Decreased number of neutrophils resulting in increased inflammation and tissue injury
Delivery of complement proteins and activation of complement pathways
What are the three oxygen free radicals
OH®, O2- and H2O2
Describe some of the properties of reactive oxygen species
They have a single unpaired electron
Unstable
Lead to a chain reaction
Particularly produced in chemical and radiation injury, ischaemia reperfusion injury, cellular aging and high O2 content
Mutagenic but also involved in physiological processes
How do free radicals cause damage
Attack lipids in the cell membrane causing lipid perioxidation and molecules to become bent, broken or cross linked.
Also affect carbohydrates and nucleic acids
How are hydroxyl residues produced?
Radiation directly lyses water to form radicals
Fenton and harber weiss reactions
When is the fenton reaction important ? Why?
Bruising - uses Fe2+ as a co factor which is abundant at the site
Why is it very important to remove O2- and H2O2 ?
These are the substrates fot the harber weiss reaction which produces hydroxyle radicals ( most dangerous)
Describe the body’s anti-oxidant system
SOD- O2- into H2O2
Catalases and perperoxidases complete process producing water and molecular oxygen
Free radical scavengers Vit ACE and glutathione
Storage proteins – sequester transition metals in extracellular matrix ( transferrin and ceruloplasmin( Cu2+ )- catalase production of free radicals
Give an example of a heat shock protein
Ubiquitin
What happens to heat shock proteins during injury?
Increases in concentration - ALWAYS PRESENT
Where do heat shock proteins act?
In the cell ( not secreted)
What is the function of heat shock proteins?
Recognize incorrectly folded proteins and repair them – if unable protein destroyed.
Maintaining protein viability gives increased chance of survival for the cell
How can we see increased membrane permeability ?
Dye exclusion technique
What is the alteration to the cytoplasmic seen by a cell that has undergone cell injury under a light microscope?
Decreased pink staining due to increased water followed by increased staining due to detachment of ribosomes from ER and accumulation of dentaured proteins