Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
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Query: UMLS:C0034067 (emphysema)
 11,506 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

Primary or isolated pulmonary interstitial glycogenosis (PIG) is a rare disease presenting as tachypnea and hypoxemia during the perinatal period. A diffuse interstitial infiltrate with focal hyperinflation is visible on chest imaging. The biopsy findings include diffuse expansion of the interstitium by spindle-shaped cells with pale cytoplasm that, on electron microscopy (EM), are poorly differentiated mesenchymal cells containing abundant monoparticulate glycogen. This glycogenosis appears to be a transient abnormality, usually with a favorable prognosis. Recently, cases of PIG, some associated with other pulmonary or systemic abnormalities, have been described. The clinical significance and potential role of PIG changes remain unknown. We report 28 cases of PIG associated with a spectrum of pediatric pulmonary and cardiovascular disorders, including arterial hypertensive changes with and without abnormal alveolar development (n=9), congenital heart disease (CHD; n=4), hyperplasia of pulmonary neuroendocrine cells resembling neuroendocrine hyperplasia of infancy (NEHI, n=5), congenital pulmonary airway malformation (n=5), congenital lobar emphysema (n=4), and Noonan syndrome (n=1). In all cases, PIG was confirmed by positive periodic acid-Schiff (PAS) staining, immunopositivity for vimentin, and EM. Although some patients improved with age, 7 died of respiratory failure or complications of CHD, suggesting that PIG may be clinically significant when associated with other severe disorders. The association of PIG with a spectrum of mostly congenital lung disorders supports its origin as a developmental abnormality of interstitial fibroblast differentiation rather than a nonspecific reactive process.
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PMID:Pulmonary interstitial glycogenosis associated with a spectrum of neonatal pulmonary disorders. 2887 55

PIZZ alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency (AATD) is an autosomal recessive disease affecting approximately 100,000 individuals in the United States and one of the most common hereditary causes of liver disease.1 The most common form of the disease results from a single base pair mutation (Glu342Lys), known as the "Z" mutation, that encodes a mutant protein (Z alpha-1 antritypsin [AAT]) that is prone to misfolding and is retained in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) rather than appropriately secreted. Some of the retained mutant protein attains an unusual aggregated or polymerized conformation. Retained polymeric ZAAT aggregates are hepatotoxic and lead to downstream liver disease in a subset of PiZZ neonates and adults through a gain-of-function mechanism. PiZZ individuals are likewise highly predisposed to developing chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)/emphysema as a result of low circulating levels of AAT protein and associated protease-antiprotease imbalance. Much of our understanding of the molecular pathogenesis of AATD is based on studies employing either transgenic mice that express the mutant human Z allele or immortalized cell lines transduced to overexpress ZAAT. While they have been quite informative, these models fail to capture the patient-to-patient variability in disease phenotype that clinicians observe in their AATD patients, raising the question of whether alternative models might provide new insight. Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), first described in 2006, have the capacity to differentiate into a broad array of cell types from all 3 germ layers, including hepatocytes. Disease-specific iPSCs have been derived from patients with a variety of monogenic disorders and have been found to faithfully recapitulate features of such diseases as spinal muscular atrophy, familial dysautonomia, Rett syndrome, polycythemia vera, type 1A glycogen storage disease, familial hypercholesterolemia, long QT syndrome, and others. This discussion reviews the potential applications of iPSCs for understanding AATD-associated liver disease as well as for development of potential therapeutic strategies.
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PMID:Patient-Derived Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells for Alpha-1 Antitrypsin Deficiency Disease Modeling and Therapeutic Discovery. 3072 83