Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
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Query: UMLS:C0086543 (cataract)
 29,165 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

A total of 119 patients undergoing cataract surgery in Wellington and Wellcare hospitals were studied for their demographic characteristics and the costs of their surgery. There were no significant age or sex differences between public and private sector patients and, although there were marital, ethnic and socioeconomic factors which were associated with a slightly longer stay in the public sector, these explain only a small proportion of the difference of 5.0 days in public as compared with 2.5 days stay in the private sector. The pattern of care adopted by the consultant and ward staff and medical profile affected the length of stay. The costs of the surgery were identical at $2560, including GST, in both public and private hospitals. Higher ward costs in public were offset by higher surgical costs in the private sector. A study of the marginal costs, on a day by day basis, indicated that a reduction in length of stay to 3.6 days, which has already occurred since the study, would lead to an 11% increase in throughout of cataract patients within a fixed budget. These costing data will be routinely provided by the RUS (resource utilisation system) now being implemented in New Zealand hospitals and will be an important tool for service management in making decisions about both quality of care and cost containment.
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PMID:Comparative costs of cataract surgery in a public and a private hospital. 277 96

A sequence encoding a novel glutathione transferase, GST A4-4, has been identified in a human fetal brain cDNA library. The protein has been produced in Escherichia coli after optimization of the codon usage for high-level heterologous expression. The dimeric protein has a subunit molecular mass of 25704 Da based on the deduced amino acid composition. Human GST A4-4 is a member of the Alpha class but shows only 53% amino acid sequence identity with the major liver enzyme GST A1-1. High catalytic efficiency with 4-hydroxyalkenals and other cytotoxic and mutagenic products of radical reactions and lipid peroxidation is a significant feature of GST A4-4. The kcat/Km values for 4-hydroxynonenal and 4-hydroxydecenal are > 3 x 10(6) M-1. s-1, several orders of magnitude higher than the values for conventional GST substrates. 4-Hydroxynonenal and other reactive electrophiles produced by oxidative metabolism have been linked to aging, atherosclerosis, cataract formation, Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease, as well as other degenerative human conditions, suggesting that human GST A4-4 fulfills an important protective role and that variations in its expression may have significant pathophysiological consequences.
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PMID:Human glutathione transferase A4-4: an alpha class enzyme with high catalytic efficiency in the conjugation of 4-hydroxynonenal and other genotoxic products of lipid peroxidation. 946 7

Glutathione Transferases (GSTs) are crucial enzymes in the cell detoxification process catalyzing the nucleophilic attack of glutathione (GSH) on toxic electrophilic substrates and producing a less dangerous compound. GSTs studies are of great importance since they have been implicated in the development of drug resistance in tumoral cells and are related to human diseases such as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, atherosclerois, liver cirrhosis, aging and cataract formation. In this review we start by providing an evolutionary perspective of the mammalian cytosolic GSTs known to date. Later on we focus on the more abundant classes alpha, mu and pi and their structure, catalysis, metabolic associated functions, drug resistance relation and inhibition methods. Finally, we introduce the recent insights on the GST class zeta from a metabolic perspective.
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PMID:Mammalian cytosolic glutathione transferases. 1869 Nov 23