Planned intervention: On Wednesday April 3rd 05:30 UTC Zenodo will be unavailable for up to 2-10 minutes to perform a storage cluster upgrade.
Published April 15, 2017 | Version v1
Journal article Open

The role of homocysteine in endothelial dysfunction

  • 1. Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology No 2, Nicolae Testemitsanu State University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Chisinau, the Republic of Moldova

Description

Background: Homocysteine is a sulfur-containing intermediate product in the normal metabolism of methionine, an essential amino acid.Hyperhomocysteinemia defines the state in which concentrations of homocysteine exceeds normal level. Homocysteine is located at a metabolic branchpoint and can either be irreversibly degraded to cysteine via the transsulfuration pathway, or conserved by remethylation back to methionine. Folicacid, vitamin B12, and vitamin B6 deficiencies and reduced enzyme activities inhibit the breakdown of homocysteine, thus increasing the concentrationof intracellular homocysteine. Being cytotoxic, homocysteine is increasingly exported from the cell to become detectable in plasma. In recent years theamino acid homocysteine has achieved the status of an important factor in vascular disease, diseases of aging, and other fundamental processes in biologyand medicine. Hyperhomocysteinemia may alter vascular morphology, stimulate inflammation, activate the endothelium and the blood clotting cascade,and inhibit fibrinolysis. As a result, hyperhomocysteinemia is associated with loss of endothelial antithrombotic function and induction of a procoagulantenvironment. The role of homocysteine in endothelial dysfunction is thought to be mediated by mechanisms including oxidative stress. Vascular injurycould be caused by an imbalance between nitric oxide production from dysfunctional endothelial cells and homocysteine concentrations.

Conclusions: Hyperhomocysteinemia is associated with alterations in vascular morphology, loss of endothelial antithrombotic function, and inductionof a procoagulant environment.

Files

MMJ-60-2-pp35-40.pdf

Files (388.0 kB)

Name Size Download all
md5:8e070b96a664976ac4e828a2dfaa24f0
388.0 kB Preview Download