Abnormal metabolism of cells

• fatty change is one of the common changes that causes cells to increase what they have in them

• Wilson’s disease is a disease where you synthesize a copper transport protein but you can’t get it out; it fills up the Golgi apparatus and it just sits there. there are a whole bunch of diseases like this (gene to make protein is there but gene to make the transporter isn’t there)

• Tay-Sachs disease: liposomal storage disease due to lack of enzyme

• iron overload: exogenous material accumulates in cells

Fatty liver

• too much fatty acid synthesis occurs and not enough export of lipoproteins happens

• you can also see alcoholic hyalin, a condensation of proteins in dying cells

• the two together are almost pathognomonic of alcoholic liver disease

Hemosiderosis

• iron on H&E stain looks like brown granules

• on Prussian blue stain, it turns blue

• so these cells have accumulated iron

Lipofuscin

• a collection of yellowish stuff in cells, staining black in the bottom images

• we’ll see this in the laboratory

Alcoholic hyalin

• normally, from the preparation process, lipids turn into empty space; hepatocytes containing a lot of lipids therefore look mostly empty under light microscopy

• in this cell, there isn’t complete empty space, rather, there is cloudy swelling, which is illustrative of cells that have lost their ability to pump ions and water out of the cell

• this is a nonspecific form of cell injury

• so, a lot of these things can happen all at once

Microorganism-induced changes

• these changes are an inflammatory response to an infection or to some toxin that you can’t get rid of

• cells undergo a form of necrosis termed caseous (cheesy) necrosis

Sickle-cell disease

• hypoxic changes lead to deformation of red blood cells; this is ultimately a consequence of an amino acid mutation

Category: Medical Subject Notes , Pathology Notes