Cystic Fibrosis and The Effects on the Pancreas

1. Cystic Fibrosis and The Effects on the Pancreas By Jon Obert

2. What is cystic fibrosis • It is an genetic disease that is caused by a deletion of three base pairs on chromosome 7. • This deletion causes a mutation in the cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator protein (CFTR), which is responsible for transporting chloride into and out of cells. • This causes it to not function properly or to be totally absent from the cell

3. What does this do to the body? • Since the epithelial cells do not take in chloride, the salt balance of the skin gets messed up. • This causes all the mucus in the body to become extremely thick.

4. The Pancreas • The Pancreas is an organ in the body that secretes enzymes into the intestines to digest foods. • Some of the enzymes it secretes helps digest fats.

5. What does cystic fibrosis do to a Pancreas? • The pancreas normally has a thin mucosal coating around it. • The mutated protein that causes cystic fibrosis causes the mucus to become very thick. • This blocks the pathway the enzymes take to the intestines so no enzymes can reach their destination.

6. What does this Cause? • Since no enzymes reach the intestines and these enzymes help digest and absorb fat along with a few other nutrients, Not much fat is absorbed in the body, and other nutrients are not absorbed properly. • That is why people with cystic fibrosis are normally skinny, even with strong healthy diets, they still have trouble gaining weight.

7. What happens to all the fat that is undigested? • It is removed with the feces and can cause severe diarrhea and weight loss.

8. Overall • The mutation of this one protein affects so many different things in the body which makes cystic fibrosis a very difficult disease to deal with and life threatening.

9. References • http://www.ygyh.org/cf/cause.htm • http://kidshealth.org/parent/medical/lungs/cf.html • http://kidshealth.org/kid/health_problems/heart/cystic_fibrosis.html