Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
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Query: UMLS:C0031099 (periodontitis)
 12,489 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

Evidence of immune stimulation has been noted in opiate dependent patients for many decades. Documented changes have included lymphadenopathy, round cell infiltration of the hepatic portal triads, diffuse peri-bronchitis, hyperglobulinaemia, lymphocytosis, monocytosis, systemic cytokine stimulation, and cytokine and chemokine activation within the neuraxis. A parallel literature describes an elevated list of chronic degenerative disease as common in such patients including neurodegenerative conditions, atherosclerosis, nephrosclerosis, hepatic fibrosis and cirrhosis, chronic obstructive and fibrotic lung disease, osteoporosis, chronic periodontitis, various cancers, hair greying, and stem cell suppression. All of these disorders are now known to have an important immunological role in their pathogenic pathways. The multisystem nature of these myriad changes strongly suggest that the ageing process itself is stimulated in these patients. The link between the immunostimulation on the one hand and the elevated and temporally advanced nature of the chronic degenerative diseases on the other appears not to have been made in the literature. Moreover as immunostimulation is also believed to be an important, potent and principal contributor to the ageing process it appears that experimental and studies of this putative link are warranted. Verification of such an hypothesis would also carry management implications for dose and duration of chronic pain and addiction treatment, pharmacotherapeutic selection, and novel treatments such as long term naltrexone implant therapy and heroin trials.
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PMID:Chronic immune stimulation as a contributing cause of chronic disease in opiate addiction including multi-system ageing. 2080 Mar 62

Drug abuse is a serious problem associated with different pathological outcomes including modulating the immune system. Drug abuse is rising in Saudi Arabia and so as TB, a disease of worldwide significance, caused by immunological modulation in the host system. Khat chewing is a common practice in Arabian Peninsula which is now gaining momentum in other parts of the world. It is considered as an addiction. It has been associated with different adverse outcomes such as periodontitis, oral leukoplakia and oral cancer and also has shown to promote apoptotic cell death through cysteine proteases. The active ingredient of khat, cathinone is shown to have immunomodulatory effect. In principle, this leads to enhanced susceptibility to various infections. The present study is designed to delineate the mechanism of immunomodulation produced by khat/cathinone in human/mouse macrophage. Further, this activity will be evaluated both in vivo and in vitro in response to infection with Mycobacterium smegmatis to get an insight if there exists a co relation between the Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection and khat chewing.
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PMID:Does khat chewing increases the risk of Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection by macrophage immune modulation? 2466 41

Smoking is a leading cause of preventable death. The effect of tobacco is even more contundent in people with mental illness and, in general, cigarette smoking addiction is influenced by genetic factors. The opioid system is involved in the mesolimbic reward system, which is of great importance in addictive behaviors, such as smoking and is influenced by genes such as the OPRM1. The aim of this study was to evaluate if selecting a comparison group that include light smokers versus people that never smoked impacts the results of genetic association studies. In addition, to evaluate the genetic association in different groups of smokers by analyzing independent covariates such as mental illness and clinical dental data. All subjects were participants of the Dental Registry and DNA Repository project. Genotyping was carried out using TaqMan chemistry for two markers in OPRM1 (rs553202 and rs7755635). Logistic regression analyses were performed as implemented in PLINK. The established value for alpha was 5%, and the Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium was evaluated by the chi-square test with one degree of freedom for each marker. 1,897 patients were included, which were allocated to eight distinct groups, according to the frequency and quantity of cigarettes smoked and mental illness status. There was no significant association between the two markers in OPRM1 and smoking. When mental illness and dental clinical data (tooth loss, dental caries, and periodontitis) were used as covariates, there were associations between heavy smoking and OPRM1, when non-smokers were used as comparison. We did not have diet or microbiome data to consider for these dental analyses and suggest that these kinds of data should be always incorporated in the future. Significant results were found only when the covariables mental illness and oral clinical data were added to the analysis.
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PMID:The concept of exposure when selecting comparison groups for determining individual susceptibility to addiction to cigarette smoking. 3097 2