Essay On Cystic Fibrosis

CYSTIC FIBROSIS
INTRODUCTION
Cystic fibrosis, also known as mucoviscodosis, muco meaning the mucus that builds up in the airways and blocks up the passageways. It is an autosomal recessive disorder and it can be life threatening if tests are not done at birth, especially the screening tests on new-born babies ‘’’screening tests” which are laboratory tests that help to identify infants with high risk of getting the disease or being aware of the symptoms. It is a hereditary disease that is passed on to the children by genes. Usually the parents of the child are the carriers, they both have a recessive allele for this disease and when they mate 25% chances of the first filial generation will have this disease. Cystic fibrosis attacks the cells that produce mucus, sweat, and digestive juices. Normally the fluids that are thin and slippery but in Cystic fibrosis the faulty gene inhibits the secretion to be thick and sticky, rather than acting as a lubricant the secretions blocks the tubes, ducts and passageways in the

The concentration of the chloride in sweat is therefore elevated in people with cystic fibrosis .The concentration of the sodium in sweat is also elevated in cystic fibrosis .Unlike CFTR chloride channels ,sodium channels behave perfectly, normally in cystic fibrosis . However in order for the secretion to be electrically neutral, sodium caption positively charged remain in the sweat along with negatively charged chloride anions .In this way the chloride anions are said to trap the sodium captions. Again when the CFTR is defective, epithelial cells can’t regulate the way that chloride (part of the salt called sodium chloride) passes across cell membranes. This disrupts the important balance of the salt and water needed to maintain a normal thin coating of the