While it is seldom fatal to the user, withdrawal from opiates (and some other drugs) can cause miscarriage, due to fetal withdrawal. The term "cold turkey" is used to describe the sudden cessation use of a substance and the ensuing physiologic manifestations. The symptoms from withdrawal may be even more dramatic when the drug has masked prolonged malnutrition, disease, chronic pain, infections (common in intravenous drug use), or sleep deprivation, conditions that drug abusers often develop as a secondary consequence of the drug. When the drug is removed, these conditions may resurface and be confused with withdrawal symptoms. Genes that encode for the Alpha5 Nicotinic Acetylcholine Receptor affect nicotine and alcohol withdrawal symptoms. Effect on homeostasis
Homeostasis is the bodys ability to maintain a certain chemical equilibrium in the brain and throughout the body. For example, the function of shivering in response to cold is to produce heat maintaining internal temperature at around 37 °C (98.6 °F). Homeostasis is impacted in many ways by drug usage and withdrawal. The internal systems perpetuate homeostasis by using different counter-regulatory methods in order to create a new state of balance based on the presence of the drug in the system. These methods include adapting the bodys levels of neurotransmitters, hormones, and other substances present to adjust for the addition of the drug to the body.
Atypical chronic myeloid leukemia (aCML) is a type of leukemia. It is a heterogeneous disorder belonging to the group of myelodysplastic/myeloproliferative (MDS/MPN) syndromes. In aCML many clinical features (splenomegaly, myeloid predominance in the bone marrow with some dysplastic features but without a differentiation block) and laboratory abnormalities (myeloid proliferation, low leukocyte alkaline phosphatase values) suggest the diagnosis of chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML). However the lack of the pathognomonic Philadelphia chromosome and of the resulting BCR-ABL1 fusion point to a different pathogenetic process. Since no specific recurrent genomic or karyotypic abnormalities have been identified in aCML, the molecular pathogenesis of this disease has remained elusive and the outcome dismal (median survival 37 months) with no improvement over the last 20 years. This sharply contrasts with the outcome for CML, for which the prognosis was dramatically improved by the development of imatinib as a specific inhibitor of the BCR-ABL protein and in particular for CML.In 2012 SETBP1 was identified as a novel oncogene in aCML; specific somatic mutations of this gene were discovered in people with aCML and related diseases. These mutations, which are identical to the ones present in SGS as germline mutations, impair the degradation of SETBP1 and therefore cause increased cellular levels of the protein. == References ==