Last week, I attended a seminar given by Dr. Steven Myers, from the University of Louisville School of Medicine Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, titled "Tobacco Smoking During Pregnancy: Biomarkers of Exposure and Relationship to Genetics." I really enjoyed this seminar because I plan on going into the medical field and find subjects such as this fascinating, and because he gave the seminar on an undergraduate level, making it easy to follow. He began his seminar by telling of all the different possible side effects of smoking while pregnant: higher rates of miscarriage, still born babies, premature birth, low birthweight, SIDS, lower I.Q., asthma, and many others. I did feel that this part of the seminar was a little slow because of repetition; he had the same side effects on multiple slides. He continued the seminar with smoking related facts: smoking is the leading cause of avoidable cancers, smoking contributes to cardiovascular, cerebrovascular, respiratory, and pediatric diseases, cigarette smoke gives off 4,000 different chemicals (e.g. 4-aminobiphenyl),
and the first 6-8 weeks of pregnancy is when the baby is most susceptible to cigarette smoke. Dr. Myers then got into what biomarkers are and what their use is to determine the effects of smoking on unborn babies. He defined a biomarker as a molecular, biochemical, or cellular alteration that can be measured (e.g. biological fluids). The questions that you have to ask when choosing a biomarker are what is the relationship between the biomarker and the disease, how long does it take the biomarker to pick up the disease, can the biomarker be obtained unobtrusively, is the biomarker easy to process, and how do genetics and race affect the biomarker? Some of the most effective biomarkers are amniotic fluid, for the first trimester, and blood. I thoroughly enjoyed Dr. Myers' seminar and have no negative comments other that it started off slow (not really a big deal door a good seminar).
-The High School Chemist
Source
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:4-aminobiphenyl_structure.svg
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