An early objective in biochemistry was to provide analytical methods for the determination of various blood\u00a0constituents\u00a0because it was felt that abnormal levels might indicate the presence of metabolic diseases. The clinical chemistry laboratory now has become a major investigative arm of the physician in the\u00a0diagnosis\u00a0and treatment of\u00a0disease\u00a0and is an indispensable unit of every hospital. Some of the older analytical methods directed toward diagnosis of common diseases are still the most commonly used\u2014for example, tests for determining the levels of blood\u00a0glucose, in diabetes;\u00a0urea, in kidney disease;\u00a0uric acid, in gout; and bilirubin, in\u00a0liver\u00a0and\u00a0gallbladder\u00a0disease. With development of the knowledge of enzymes, determination of certain enzymes in\u00a0blood plasma\u00a0has assumed diagnostic value, such as\u00a0alkaline phosphatase, in bone and liver disease; acid phosphatase, in prostatic cancer;\u00a0amylase, in pancreatitis; and lactate dehydrogenase and\u00a0transaminase, in cardiac infarct. Electrophoresis of plasma proteins is commonly employed to aid in the diagnosis of various liver diseases and forms of cancer. Both electrophoresis and ultracentrifugation of\u00a0serum\u00a0constituents (lipoproteins) are used increasingly in the diagnosis and examination of therapy of atherosclerosis and\u00a0heart disease. Many specialized and sophisticated methods have been introduced, and machines have been developed for the simultaneous automated analysis of many different blood constituents in order to cope with increasing medical needs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Analytical biochemical methods have also been applied in the food industry to develop crops superior in nutritive value and capable of retaining nutrients during the processing and preservation of food. Research in this area is directed particularly to preserving vitamins as well as colour and taste, all of which may suffer loss if oxidative enzymes remain in the preserved food. Tests for enzymes are used for monitoring various stages in\u00a0food processing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Biochemical techniques have been fundamental in the development of new drugs. The testing of potentially useful drugs includes studies on experimental animals and man to observe the desired effects and also to detect possible toxic manifestations; such studies depend heavily on many of the clinical biochemistry techniques already described. Although many of the commonly used drugs have been developed on a rather\u00a0empirical\u00a0(trial-and-error) basis, an increasing number of therapeutic agents have been designed specifically as\u00a0enzyme inhibitors to interfere with the metabolism of a host or invasive agent. Biochemical advances in the knowledge of the action of natural hormones and antibiotics promise to aid further in the development of specific pharmaceuticals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
An early objective in biochemistry was to provide analytical methods for the determination of various blood\u00a0constituents\u00a0because it was felt that abnormal levels might indicate the presence of metabolic diseases. The clinical chemistry laboratory now has become a major investigative arm of the physician in the\u00a0diagnosis\u00a0and treatment of\u00a0disease\u00a0and is an indispensable unit of every hospital. Some […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biochemistry"],"Cooking_time":"","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cake.appscodestudio.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cake.appscodestudio.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cake.appscodestudio.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cake.appscodestudio.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cake.appscodestudio.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2054"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cake.appscodestudio.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2054\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2055,"href":"https:\/\/cake.appscodestudio.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2054\/revisions\/2055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cake.appscodestudio.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cake.appscodestudio.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cake.appscodestudio.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}