Saturday, August 28, 2004
My Lack of Organization is my DownfallI saw a report about a new study that just came out linking the lack of a key protein to the formation of keloid scars and fibroid tumors. It was a study conducted by Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USUHS) and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health and published in July 2004 in the journal Genes, Chromosomes and Cancer. You can read an article about it here at the National Institutes of Health. (The actual study bears the name “Involvement of fumarate hydratase in nonsyndromic uterine leiomyomas.”) Anyway, it basically states that in women with fibroids they found that they were missing a key protein that helps to bind tissues. This protein controls the way that collagen arranges itself. In normal people collagen arranges itself in structured, regular strands that help form a lattice and support for the rest of the tissue. In women lacking the protein the collagen is disorganized in disjointed and irregular strings that don’t had discrete patterns of growth. So in a this uterine tissue, something starts growing wrong and it just doesn’t know where or when to stop. In a scar, the tissue tries to bind back together but just ends up making a puddle of tissue that goes out of the bounds of the original wound. Of course this is of particular interest to me because I had fibroids and make keloid scars. This missing protein also explains the genetic component to both of these problems - keloids and fibroids have been shown statistically to run in families and in certain racial groups (three times more likely to occur in African-Americans). I hope since they’re able to isolate this protein deficiency that someday they’ll be able to easily treat these conditions with injections. (Keloids can be especially difficult in burn patients, as if a burn victim doesn’t have enough to worry about with the painful burns, it’s the scars that cause the disfigurement. It’d be very comforting to know that this could be the step to curing that.) POSTED BY Cybele AT 2:57 pm |
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During November it's all about me writing a novel. Sometimes it's about whalewatching. You know, and then there's other stuff.
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his missing protein also explains the genetic component to both of these problems - keloids and fibroids have been shown statistically to run in families and in certain racial groups…
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