Laboratory: diseases — симптомы, диагностика и лечение

Viral hepatitis B and C are chronic infections that affect the liver and remain asymptomatic for years. This is their main danger: a person feels healthy until cirrhosis or liver cancer develops. However, the situation with their treatment has changed radically over the past decade. Hepatitis C today can be cured in the vast majority of cases with a course of tablets lasting 8-12 weeks. Hepatitis B cannot yet be completely cured, but it can be reliably controlled, and most importantly, there is a vaccine against it.

Type 2 diabetes is a disease in which cells stop responding normally to insulin and glucose accumulates in the blood. It accounts for the vast majority of all cases of diabetes. Its main feature is its long asymptomatic course: the disease develops over years, and by the time the diagnosis is made, some patients already have complications from the eyes, kidneys and nerves. The good news is that type 2 diabetes is well controlled, and in the early stages, lifestyle changes can bring your levels back to normal.

Iron deficiency anemia is the most common deficiency condition in the world and is most common in women of childbearing age, pregnant women and adolescents. The main thing to understand right away is that hemoglobin is the last to fall. First, the body uses up iron reserves in the depot, and the person lives for months with hair loss, brittle nails, shortness of breath on the stairs and constant fatigue, and the hemoglobin in the blood test is still “normal.” The indicator that detects this stage is ferritin, and it is this indicator that is most often forgotten to be prescribed. Therefore, the usual phrase “my hemoglobin is 125, which means everything is fine with iron” sounds convincing, but in fact does not prove anything.

Vitamin B12 is needed not only by the blood, but also by the nervous system, and this determines everything in its deficiency. The reserves are consumed over the years, so the condition develops slowly and imperceptibly, and the first complaints are often not pallor and weakness, but numbness in the feet, unsteadiness of gait and memory impairment. The most important thing to know is that hematopoiesis is restored almost completely during treatment, but damage to nerve fibers may remain forever if it starts late. B12 deficiency is exactly the case when the cost of several months of delay is measured not by well-being, but by irreversible changes.

Platelets are the cells that are the first to close a damaged vessel. When there are few of them, the blood stops longer, bruises without contusions and small red dots appear on the skin. At the same time, the number in itself in the analysis does not determine the danger: many people live for years with moderately reduced platelets and do not have a single episode of bleeding. Three things matter - how low the indicator is, whether there is bleeding and what is the reason behind it. And one more thing that is checked at the very beginning: the result can be false, the platelets stick together right in the test tube, and the person undergoes a long examination in vain.

Hypothyroidism is a condition in which the thyroid gland does not produce enough hormones. Since these hormones regulate the metabolic rate in almost all tissues, the symptoms are very varied and nonspecific: fatigue, chilliness, weight gain, dry skin, hair loss, constipation, depression. It is because of its nonspecificity that hypothyroidism has been attributed for years to age, overwork, or depression. At the same time, diagnosis is extremely simple - one blood test for TSH is enough, and treatment consists of taking one tablet daily.

The phrase “I have high cholesterol” sounds like a death sentence, although cholesterol itself is not poison or metabolic waste. It is a building material for cell membranes, bile acids, vitamin D and sex hormones, and the body is so interested in it that it produces it itself, regardless of food. The problem is not cholesterol per se, but the carriers in which it travels through the blood: low-density lipoproteins leave it in the artery wall, high-density lipoproteins take it back. Therefore, one general indicator says almost nothing, and the decision on treatment is made not according to the line of analysis, but according to the total risk of heart attack and stroke in the coming years - taking into account age, blood pressure, smoking, sugar and heredity.

Vitamin D is the only vitamin that a person normally does not receive from food, but produces it himself: under the influence of ultraviolet radiation in the skin. Hence the logical question: where does the deficit come from where there is an abundance of sun? However, it is often found in sunny regions, and there are several reasons for this: closed clothing, living and working indoors, darker skin types, window glass that completely blocks the desired range of ultraviolet radiation, and low sun levels in the cold months. The second side of the topic is the opposite extreme: vitamin D has ceased to be considered a vitamin and has begun to be considered a remedy for everything, which is why it is prescribed to everyone and in doses that have their own price.