Shweta Singh
Lucknow, India
Bechan Sharma
Department of Biochemistry, University of Allahabad, Allahabad, India
Series: Genetics – Research and Issues
Chronic pancreatitis (CP), a worldwide disease, is primarily recognized as a long-standing inflammation of the pancreas that alters the organ’s normal structure and functions. CP reflects the end-stage pathology of inflammation-associated diseases. It presents episodes of acute inflammation or chronic damage of pancreas with symptoms of persistent abdominal pain or malabsorption, weight loss, pain related to the intake of food containing a high percentage of fats and protein. The health conditions of diabetics have been found to deteriorate due to pancreatic damage in CP. A plethora of information has emerged in recent years in the area of pancreatitis research.
The frontiers of current pancreatic research reflected its newer definitions, classifications, tools for investigations, animal models, insight into the molecular mechanisms of the initiation of the earliest pancreatic injury, the role of cytokines and inflammation; and attributes of genetic mutations in SPINK1 CFTR, CTSB, MTHFR and ACE etc. during pancreatitis. The topological variations of patients have been found to be associated to a different trend of pathogenesis and severity of the disease, which might be associated to relatively poor nutritional uptake and other environmental factors. Keeping these facts in view, we envisaged to bring out an updated overview on this subject in general and to present the experiment based information on tropical chronic pancreatitis (TCP) in the patients from northern part of India in particular.
This publication includes different aspects of TCP such as clinical profiling in blood of TCPs, identification and analysis of different genes associated to TCP, detection of mutations in these genes using armed PCR, RFLP, electrophoresis and DNA sequencing, establishing a correlation of these mutations to the severity and pathogenesis of TCP, gene-gene interactions, genotype-phenotype correlation (microarray analysis), screening of different probands from TCP families and establishing these mutations as specific markers for early diagnosis and prognosis of the disease. This book is divided in eight different sections and describes various specific protocols and procedures used in the study, many specific diagrams, illustrations and presentations in simple Tables and Figures which are self explanatory so as to make any reader well versed to this subject. In addition, the specific flow charts are added to simplify the presentation. The concerned cited references are suitably indexed.
We are therefore confident that this title would be highly useful to all those concerned with research or academic interest in knowing molecular bases of TCP and exploring genetic of biochemical markers for the diagnosis and prognosis of the disease. We shall gratefully appreciate receiving comments/suggestions from our readers so as to help us improve the book in the next edition. (Imprint: Nova Biomedical)
