What does pathophysiology study?
Abnormalities in the physiological functioning of living organisms.
Which types of alterations caused by disease does pathophysiology include?
Mechanical, physical, and biochemical alterations.
What does pathology study, unlike physiology?
Changes caused by disease.
Which modern pathology explanation involves genes, proteins, and metabolites?
Disease through cellular and molecular abnormalities.
What does aetiology study in relation to a specific pathological process?
Its proposed cause or causes.
What factors interact to cause most diseases?
Genetic constitution and environmental influences.
What is pathogenesis?
The development or progression of disease from its initial stimulus to its final manifestation.
What does pathogenesis connect the initial stimulus to?
Clinical manifestations.
What does pathophysiology encompass?
Aetiology, pathogenesis, clinical manifestations, and therapeutic implications.
What distinguishes disease signs from symptoms?
Signs are observable manifestations; symptoms are subjective sensations of bodily abnormality.
What is a syndrome?
A pattern of signs and symptoms that tend to occur together.
For a normally distributed physiological variable, what proportion falls within two standard deviations of the mean?
Approximately 95%.
Why can a statistically normal value still be clinically abnormal?
Healthy and diseased populations may have overlapping values.
What changes can cellular adaptation reversibly make to cells?
Size, number, phenotype, activity, or function.
What purpose do cellular adaptations serve when cells face injury?
They help cells respond to their environment and escape or protect themselves from injury.
What happens to cell size during atrophy?
It decreases.
What happens to cell size during hypertrophy?
It increases, enlarging the affected organ.
What changes during hyperplasia?
Cell number increases through cell division.
What is metaplasia?
A reversible replacement of one mature epithelial or mesenchymal cell type by another.
What cellular features change in dysplasia?
The size, shape, and organization of mature cells.
What causes can result in cell injury?
Hypoxia, physical agents, chemicals or drugs, immune reactions, infections, genetic abnormalities, or nutritional imbalances.
What can persistent cell injury lead to?
Irreversible injury and cell death.
What are the three general mechanisms of cell injury?
ATP depletion, excess cytosolic free calcium, and reactive oxygen species.
How can ATP depletion cause cellular swelling?
It impairs membrane pumps, increasing intracellular sodium.
What cellular changes characterize necrosis?
Cell and organelle swelling, membrane rupture, and inflammation.
What is apoptosis?
A cellular self-destruction program occurring under physiological and pathological conditions.
How do apoptotic cells signal for removal?
They display signals for phagocytosis.
What happens to apoptotic nuclei?
They condense and fragment.
Which cellular-level disease view did Rudolf Virchow (1821–1902) hold?
Diseases originate at the cellular level.
What does a strong disease–agent link imply about exposed people?
Not everyone exposed develops the disease.
What does pathogenesis include besides direct effects of the triggering event?
Usual physiological responses and compensatory mechanisms.
How can clinicians assess clinical manifestations?
Through medical history, examination, diagnostic imaging, and other tests.
What can be true of some signs and symptoms?
They can be non-specific.
What can influence clinical manifestations?
The disorder’s stage, individual variability, severity, and chronicity.
In a reference range, what percentage of values lie above the range?
Approximately 2.5%.
In a reference range, what percentage of values lie below the range?
Approximately 2.5%.
Which factors can cause physiological variation unrelated to disease?
Age, sex and gender, ethnic origin, geographical field, and time of day.
What kinds of parameters can help diagnose and monitor clinical conditions?
Structural, physiological, and genetic parameters.
What partly influences the interpretation of clinical parameters?
The observer’s skill and experience.
How does thymus weight change from birth through aging?
It rises to approximately 30–35 g around puberty, then progressively decreases with age.
Which tissue is commonly affected by pathological atrophy?
Skeletal muscle.
What can cause pathological atrophy?
Reduced workload, pressure, blood supply, nutrition, or hormonal or neural stimulation.
Why can identical stimuli cause different degrees of cell injury?
Modifying factors, such as nutritional status, can affect cellular adaptation.
Which cellular processes are affected first during cell injury?
Molecular and biochemical processes.
What triggers water influx during necrosis?
ATP depletion impairs membrane transport.
What does increased calcium activate during necrosis?
Enzymes.
Which developmental process involves apoptosis?
Embryonic development.
Which pathway is mitochondrial in apoptosis?
The intrinsic pathway.
Answer 22 questions on Introduction to Pathophysiology.
1. What does pathophysiology study?
2. How do pathology and physiology differ in their primary focus?
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