PORPHYRIN METABOLISM

Porphyrin Metabolism

The suggestion of Duesberg (1) that prolonged ingestion of allylisopropylacetylcarbamide (Sedormid)’ may have induced acute porphyria in a human led later workers to produce this disorder in rabbits (2) and rats (3) by oral administration of the drug. Although this experimental procedure has facilitated the study of acute porphyria, the possibility remains that some of the porphyrin excreted in...

Porphyrin metabolism in yeast.

Toxicity of polychlorinated biphenyl with special reference to porphyrin metabolism.

Oral administration of a commercial PCB mixture to chickens caused a hepatic-type porphyria characterized by hepatic accumulation and urinary excretion of uroporphyrin. To clarify the mechanism of the porphyrinogenic activity of these PCBs, we studied the structural requirement of synthetic PCB for porphyrinogenic activities by using the cultured chick embryo liver cells and examined the relati...

Effects of polyhalogenated aromatic compounds on porphyrin metabolism.

Heme production is a vital metabolic process that occurs in the bone marrow and liver. Porphyrins are unused by-products of this biosynthetic process and normally occur in urine and other body fluids in low concentrations. Various disorders can disrupt the heme biosynthetic process, causing greater quantities of porphyrins in urine. The porphyrias are a group of diseases characterized by excess...

Porphyrin formation and hemoglobin metabolism in congenital porphyria.

The studies reported here were conducted on a patient with congenital porphyria who excretes large amounts of uroporphyrin I and coproporphyrin I. They were directed to the following problems: (a) to determine whether glycine is specifically utilized in the biologic synthesis of porphyrins related to the etioporphyrin I configuration as it is utilized in the synthesis of protoporphyrin which is...