Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
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Query: UMLS:C0240066 (iron deficiency)
 7,156 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

Until recent years, main biologic markers of inflammation used in current practice were limited to erythrocyte sedimentation rate, fibrinogen, and serum protein electrophoresis. A better understanding of inflammatory mechanisms and improvement of laboratories technologies helped in better understanding of the role and potential usefulness of inflammatory reaction proteins. Arrival of proteic profile and, more recently, the development of automation, still improved analysis of variations of different inflammatory reaction proteins. These proteins are then analyzed as an element of a "functional biological system", with known and so expected kinetics and ranges. The analyze of proteic profile combines the analyze of proteins variations, with elected but not exclusive associations, as Immunoglobulins and Complement, Orosomucoid and Haptoglobin, or Albumin and Transferrin. In Internal Medicine, proteic profile may help in solving daily problems. These problems may be so schematized: when the fundamental pathology is not yet known in an unraveling check-up, facing clinical symptoms, with a normal or fewly disrupted usual biologic panel, proteic profile may help to choose investigations necessary for the diagnosis; in the follow-up of patients treated for known inflammatory pathology facing new symptoms, part has to be done between complication of the disease and/or of the treatment, new pathology associated or unefficiency of the treatment. We report herein part of our experience of proteic profile in an Internal Medicine department, from some particularly demonstrative case reports: congenital or acquired abnormality of iron metabolism, with normal usual iron panel (iron deficiency, hemochromatosis); severe evolutive inflammatory or infectious disease with normal erythrocyte sedimentation rate (temporal arteritis, infectious endocarditis).
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PMID:[Importance of the protein profile in internal medicine]. 751 44

ESR is a time-honored, simple, inexpensive test, but unfortunately it lacks sensitivity and specificity. Clinicians need to be aware of appropriate uses, because any test is expensive when ordered often, and evaluation of false-positive results may incur substantial costs and place the patient at risk from additional procedures. ESR should not be used to screen asymptomatic persons for disease. If an increased ESR is encountered and no explanation is immediately apparent, clinicians should repeat the test in several months rather than pursue an exhaustive search for occult disease. ESR may be useful in establishing a "sickness index" in elderly persons who have nonspecific changes in health status and a moderate probability of underlying disease; in screening for infection in specific settings (e.g., orthopedic surgery, pediatrics, gynecology); in diagnosing and monitoring temporal arteritis, polymyalgia rheumatica, and possibly other rheumatic diseases; in monitoring patients with treated Hodgkin's disease; and in assessing iron deficiency in anemia of chronic disease (when correlated with serum ferritin level). An ESR value exceeding 100 mm/hr has a 90% predictive value for serious underlying disease, most often infection, collagen vascular disease, or metastatic tumor. In asymptomatic persons with a markedly elevated ESR value, a minimal number of tests usually reveal the cause.
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PMID:The erythrocyte sedimentation rate. Still a helpful test when used judiciously. 959 Sep 99