Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
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Query: UMLS:C0409974 (lupus)
 22,386 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

Hundreds died and thousands were poisoned by rapeseed oil adulterated with aniline and sold illegally in Spain in 1981. The clinical manifestations, now known as the toxic oil syndrome, include pulmonary hypertension and right ventricular hypertrophy plus widespread vascular and neural lesions in other organs. Many of the late deaths ended with a scleroderma-like illness. Because scleroderma involves the heart, in this study we examined the small and large coronary arteries, neural structures, and conduction system from eight victims dying with the toxic oil syndrome. Dense fibrosis of the sinus node in two hearts resembled changes found in scleroderma. Atrionodal junctional hemorrhages and cystic degeneration of the sinus node present in the other six hearts resembled changes found in lupus erythematosus. Small and large coronary arteries exhibited focal fibromuscular dysplasia and a proliferative cystic myointimal degeneration. This latter abnormality was associated with sloughing of the inner wall and embolization of the detached fragment downstream in the same coronary artery. Every heart had many degenerative lesions within nerves, ganglia, and the coronary chemoreceptor. Both the arterial and neural abnormalities prominently involved the conduction system. Based upon observations by others with experimental feeding of rapeseed oil containing either high or low erucic acid, we suggest that this oil must remain a major suspected cause of the toxic oil syndrome, particularly in conjunction with some as yet unexplained facilitative influence by oleoanilids. If this is so, it is important to reconsider the widely recommended use of any rapeseed oil product as a suitable food for man or other animals.
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PMID:Histologic abnormalities of large and small coronary arteries, neural structures, and the conduction system of the heart found in postmortem studies of individuals dying from the toxic oil syndrome. 195 84

Arylamine N-acetyltransferases (NATs) catalyse the N-acetylation of arylamines, arylhydroxylamines and arylhydrazines with the acetyl group being transferred from acetylCoenzyme A. As a result of many recent advances in NAT research there have been many recent reviews and the present paper gives a flavour of the excitement in the field. The NATs, which are cytosolic, were early examples of pharmacogenetic variation. Polymorphism in isoniazid inactivation resulting in slow acetylation was subsequently found to be due to SNPs in the gene encoding the human isoenzyme NAT2. There are two polymorphic genes (NAT1 and NAT2) encoded with a third pseudogene (NATP) at human 8p21.3. The gene structure of NAT1 and NAT2, with a single (NAT2) or multiple (NAT1) distant non-coding exons showing tissue specific splicing, opens possibilities for effects of polymorphisms outside the single coding exon. In humans, the substrate specificities of NAT1 and NAT2 are overlapping but distinct. The NAT2 isoenzyme, predominantly in liver and gut, acetylates sulphamethazine and arylhydrazine compounds. Slow acetylators are at increased risk of toxicity, e.g. isoniazid induced neurotoxicity and hydralazine-induced lupus. The human NAT1 isoenzyme is also polymorphic. It is expressed in many tissues, particularly in oestrogen receptor positive breast cancers. Human NAT1 has an endogenous role in acetylation of a folate catabolite with in vivo evidence from transgenic mice lacking the equivalent gene. For nomenclature see http://louisville.edu/medschool/pharmacology/NAT.html, the website maintained by David Hein. NAT homologues have been identified by bioinformatics analyses in zebrafish and these sequences are described, although the proteins have not yet been characterized. The first NAT crystallographic structure from Salmonella typhimurium identified the mechanism of acetyl transfer via a catalytic triad of Cys, His and Asp residues each essential for activity in all NATs. NATs from mycobacteria aided in identifying the substrate binding site and the acetylCoA binding pocket. Studies on the eukaryotic enzymes by NMR and crystallography have facilitated understanding substrate specificities of human NAT1 (5-aminosalicylate and p-aminobenzoic acid) and human NAT2 (sulphamethazine). The effect of "slow acetylator" SNPs in the coding region predominantly act through creating unstable protein that aggregates intracellularly prior to ubiquitination and degradation.
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PMID:Arylamine N-acetyltransferases: structural and functional implications of polymorphisms. 1885 12