Tag: Jaundice

How Does One Know If He Or She Has Gilbert’s

How Does One Know If He Or She Has Gilbert’s Disease?

Gilberts disease is a condition that has closely related symptoms as jaundice, in fact there had been several studies that say that some cases of jaundice is caused by Gilberts disease. A very thin line separates the two conditions and without professional help one may not be able to understand and determine which condition they are afflicted with.

Its difficult to understand why it is important to know the right condition you have if two conditions barely have a difference. The importance of knowing the right conditions that you are afflicted with is that knowing what condition you have can lead to easier treatment. Treating certain conditions requires knowing exactly the type of condition that you are experiencing. You cant really treat a flu with cough medicine right? It goes the same with every kind of condition that people experience.

Unfortunately though some conditions may not have a treatment or a cure. One of those conditions is Gilberts disease. This condition is not really damaging or harmful to the patient but it still causes a lot of discomfort. Gilberts disease causes fatigue and jaundice to a person.

Even if some conditions have no known cure or treatments it is still important to have it diagnosed properly to learn more about the condition and find a cure in the future. Going back to Gilberts disease if it has no known cure or treatment why do people still to have it diagnosed. For experts to be able to find more about the condition and to be able to find out more about how to treat it.

How do you find out if you are suffering from Gilberts disease? Is there a proven way to pinpoint the condition if Gilberts disease shares the same symptoms with jaundice? There is and you can consider following it if you have the time to examine yourself. Here is a short list of the ways and the steps to go through to systematically to find out if you have Gilberts disease.

Step number 1: If you have an inkling that you have Gilberts disease and you also found out that your family has a history of having it too, you should immediately look for the signs and symptoms of the diseases. One of the symptoms you have to look for is the symptom of jaundice. Those signs are yellowish skin and yellowish eyeballs, it may also be accompanied by swollen mucus membranes and running nose. Another symptom is fatigue due to physical stress (exercise, general stress, and illness). Other symptoms to look for include nausea, general sleepiness or tiredness, pain in the body.

Step number 2: Visit your family doctor and tell him about the symptoms and the signs that you are experiencing. You should also tell your doctor about your suspicion and your family history. This may narrow down the search for the condition you are experiencing. Telling your doctor your suspicions may help out a lot.

Step number 3: Besides testing the physical symptoms, your doctor will let you go through an indirect bilirubin blood test that will say whether the disease is at hand.

Step number 4: Once diagnosed, though there isnt a treatment for the condition your doctor can still treat the jaundice and the help relieve the pain or discomfort associated with the abdominal symptoms of Gilberts disease that can be present.

Gilbert’s Disease And Its Signs

Many people ask about Gilberts disease and how it affects a person, a lot of people are concerned about having it because there is a little knowledge that can be found about it and there only been a handful of people that are aware that they have it.

How can Gilberts disease go on unnoticed?

One of the main characteristics of Gilberts disease is that it is asymptomatic or it carries no symptoms in most patients. This makes detection and diagnosis really difficult for the doctors and for medical experts. Being asymptomatic in nature makes Gilberts disease one of the few conditions that little are known about. Clinical studies and experimentation is always important in the curing and early detection because the baseline for the condition can be set, the proper dosage for the medication and the duration of the treatment can be directed.

Another factor for the stealth of Gilberts disease is that it has no long term or short term damaging effects to people. This means that patients can live healthy and normal lives and even live to a ripe old age with no hindrances from the condition. The only clear indication that a person has Gilberts disease is if they have experienced jaundice. With only minor stomach pains and yellowish skin and eyes, Gilberts disease causes no great concern to some people.

Other symptoms connected to the condition is uncommon

The person suffering jaundice because of Gilberts disease does not usually cause any major problems, Jaundice is the condition where a person suffers from yellowish skin and eyes and a little stomach pain. However, a number of people with Gilberts disease account other symptoms, the majority of these symptoms are: tiredness, mild weakness, mild abdominal pains and mild nausea. It is not apparent whether these symptoms are in fact connected to Gilberts disease. It is likely that they will build up from time to time due to unsupported nervousness concerning the condition. There does not appear to be any association amid these symptoms and the level of bilirubin in the blood. That is, these symptoms may develop irrelevant to whether or not the level of bilirubin is high or normal.

If the height of bilirubin goes higher than a definite level you turn out to be jaundiced. This is because bilirubin is an orangey-yellow color. A few people with Gilberts disease grow to be a little jaundiced now and then. This might appear to be upsetting, but is of little alarm if the cause is Gilberts disease. It is quite common to be jaundiced if you are a patient of Gilberts disease.

More on the process of breaking down the bilirubin

Jaundicea condition brought about by high levels of bilirubin in the blood stream. For people suffering from Gilberts disease it is caused by the inability of the liver to produce an enzyme that breaks down the bilirubin in the blood and to transfer it to the gut in the form of bilecan be caused by a lot of different diseases of the liver and blood. As a result, if you contract jaundice you are expected to call for tests to make clear the reason and to discard the chance of a serious disease. A blood test can more often than not confirms the diagnosis of Gilberts disease as it demonstrates a mildly raised level of bilirubin and confirms the non-existence of a serious disease.

The Relationship Of Gilbert’s Disease And Jaundice

Unpopular diseases such as Gilberts disease can be alarming once you are diagnosed with it because you will never know what will happen to you. Upon hearing that you are or you might be suffering from it, it can be hard to accept it because you dont know what to do.

To ease the burden that people with Gilberts disease, doctors try to explain everything about the condition in laymans terms. And one of the easiest ways to understand it is if it is compared to more common diseases that have similarities in it like jaundice.

What Gilberts disease is all about

Gilberts disease was first described by a French gastroenterologist names Augustin Nicolas Gilbert in 1901. Gilberts disease is an asymptomatic (no external symptoms) condition affecting the liver. The condition affect an enzyme in the body called urodine diphosphate glucuronosyltransferase or UGT (abbreviation). UGT aids the liver in breaking down bilirubin which is found also in the blood stream.

Bilirubin is the waste product of the hemoglobin in the blood. Hemoglobin is found in the red blood cells that carry oxygen to other cells in the body to complete the cycle of respiration. After the red blood cells successfully brought the oxygen to the other parts of the body, the blood produces bilirubin. The liver cells then collect all the bilirubin produced by the blood, transfer it to the liver to be broken down into the gut, and turned to bile.

This is where UGT or urodine diphosphate glucuronosyltransferase comes in, it helps the liver cells process the bilirubin in to bile. Gilberts disease affects the production of UGT, this is because it fluctuates the production of UGT in the body. The fluctuating levels of UGT greatly affect the levels of bilirubin retained in the blood. Bilirubin is orangey- yellow in color, which in turn causes a patient to have jaundiced skin.

What is jaundice?

Jaundice is the condition of the blood that has external manifestations. The two most common manifestation of Jaundice is the yellowing of the skin and in the white of the eyes. Jaundice if one of the most common symptoms or manifestations of different liver diseases and sometimes it may be the cause of some discomfort among patients. The heightened bilirubin stores in the body and in the bloodstream causes jaundice but it usually has no serious effects and it can occur in people more than once in their entire lifetime. Mild jaundice is not always caused by diseases of the liver there are times when it may happen under conditions of over exertion, long term stress, intense fasting, and other bodily infections, but the condition is otherwise shows no external manifestations.

It happens when there is a flaw in the liver that averts from removing bilirubin from the blood, to be converted to glucuronic acid (conjugated) or excreted in bile in this case if the person has Gilberts disease.

Lastly, when there is obstruction of the bile ducts that reduces the stream of bile and bilirubin from the liver into the guts. The decreased conjugation, emission, or gush of bile that can result in jaundice refers to cholestasis: however, cholestasis does not always effect in jaundice.

Jaundice or cholestasis, by themselves, causes just a few problems (excluding the conditions of newborns, and jaundice in this case in newborns is different from most other types of jaundice.) Jaundice can make the skin and the whites of the eyes look sclera yellow. As well, stool can turn out to be light in color, even clay-colored because of the lack of bilirubin that usually gives stool its brown color. The urine may become dark or brownish in color. This takes place when the bilirubin that is building up in the blood starts to be excreted from the body in the urine.

Other than those scenarios there is not much to worry about if you have Gilberts disease, you may experience a jaundiced appearance but you can still enjoy a healthy life.

The Anatomy Of Gilbert’s Disease

People have long asked about how exactly does Gilberts disease affect us in our daily lives? Well these questions have also concerned doctors and medical experts for the longest time. This because of the peculiarity of the condition itself, Gilberts disease is hereditary in nature yet unlike other hereditary diseases it does not have any major effects on the body. To further understand the structure and the inner workings of the condition here are some of the facts revolving around it so you will be better informed.

Gilberts Syndrome

Gilbert syndrome is frequently an autonomic recessive disorder and is a familiar origin of unconjugated hyperbilirubinaemia. There has been some information of heterozygous cases, mostly in Asian populations. Gilberts disease was named after the French gastroenterologist Augustin Nicolas Gilbert in 1901. The presence of Gilberts disease in a global scale is three to eight percent depending on the area of the diagnostic criteria was used:

1. Genetics. The reason for the body contacting high bilirubin levels is because of the fluctuating levels of UGT or urodine diphosphate glucuronosyltransferase in the liver and the blood stream. UGT is an enzyme that aids the liver in breaking down bilirubin. Bilirubin is the waste product of the hemoglobin in the blood. Hemoglobin is used to carry oxygen in our bloodstream.

– Hepatic glucuronidation (essential for conjugating bilirubin) is concentrated to minimal levels to around 30 percent of standard; and – In addition to their reduced Bilirubin-UGT enzyme activity, most patients with Gilberts syndrome may have irregularities in the glucuronidation of aspirin or derivatives of coumarin and dopamine.

2. Presentation. It can stay overlooked for many years, but more often than not makes its manifestation in adolescence with:

– Irregular jaundice noticed after fasting, being short of of sleep, hearty exercise or during an intercurrent sickness. – Contacting certain medications may aid in the manifestation of jaundice e.g. chemotherapy. Unfavorable effects of anticancer agents have been observed in Gilberts patients owing to reduced drug or bilirubin glucuronidation.

There is hope

Despite other distinctive results related to Gilberts disease include jaundice, nausea, exhaustion, instability, bowel complaints, queasiness and vomiting, and difficulty concentrating. Investigations associated with the condition include: full blood count proves usual reticulocyte count – to differentiate from haemolysis; a climb in bilirubin on fasting or after IV nicotinic acid can corroborate the conclusion; additional liver function tests (as well as lactate dehydrogenase) and liver biopsy are regular, but the latter should hardly ever be required clinically; and absence of bilirubin and abnormally low amounts of urobilinogen in the urine.

The good news for people with Gilberts disease is that they really dont have much to worry about since the damage done by Gilberts disease is almost non threatening. No healing is required and life expectation is normal. Bear in mind also that not all the people who are affected by Gilberts disease show signs and symptoms at all. Although asymptomatic Gilberts disease all the way through ones life is very exceptional, there can positively be periods of time a patient has no external signs of the disease.

Absolutely no treatment is required for the condition. Patients with Gilberts disease can normally lead healthy lives. Their life expectancy is not really affected. Mild jaundice may recur from time to time for short periods, but usually causes no health problems.