What is Cystic Fibrosis? :: essays research papers

Your child is under weight, has greasy, smelly diarrhea, a inveterate cough and seems to always be getting pneumonia. He wheezes when he breathes and has impaired act upon ability. He seems to never being growing to the average size of his peers and his strip is very salty (5). The doctors first instinct should be to test your child for a disease called cystic fibrosis. Cystic fibrosis is a disease, which causes the mucus in your body to be thicker in some areas. The nigh affected areas are the lungs and digestive system. As a result, the person may get chest infections and have difficulty digesting food. When cystic fibrosis is a esteem for a persons disease the physician will do what is called a key pattern test. This is a simple and cheap way to fixate if your child has the disease. Because people who have cystic fibrosis (CF) have saltier sweat than others, the sweat test detects the amount of salt in the sweat of the individual (4). This is the better way to diagnose a person with the disease (5).CF is a genetic disease, meaning that a person does not catch it, it is contractable in the genes passed down to the person. Cystic fibrosis lasts with the patient for their whole life. This makes it a chronic disease, not communicable (9). All symptoms of CF are caused by a mutation to the single chromosome 7. This particular gene is responsible for the building of the protein called the cystic fibrosis trans membrane conductance regulator (CFTR). Normally, the gene regulates the passage of chloride ions in and out of the mobile phone, tho when mutated as in the case of CF patients the chloride ions cannot move throughout the cell membrane because the CFTR does not open. In about three- quarter of CF cases the CFTR is not just broken, but is completely missing from the cell. The missing CFTR has many cause on the human body. One is saltier sweat because as the sweat rises to the skin, cells resorb atomic number 11 and chloride molecules. The loss o f the CFTR does not allow the body to reabsorb the sodium ions making a CF patients sweat five dollar bill times saltier than that of a normal person. This can lead to irregular breast rhythms. The loss of chloride ions affects the pancreas also. The loss of the CFTR ultimately makes it impossible for digestive enzymes to be direct to the intestines.