With the success of Twilight and True Blood on HBO, vampires seem to be everywhere these days. I used to watch Buffy sometimes with Sarah in the past. It was a decent show. True Blood is pretty good too, I suppose, but I don't get this Twilight phenomenon at all.
Anyway, today we saw a patient with porphyria. According to Up-To-Date, "porphyrias are metabolic disorders caused by altered activities of enzymes within the heme biosynthetic pathway." Basically, it is a blood disorder that can affect the red blood cells or bone marrow or both. It has all kinds of crazy side effects, including skin disorders that are exacerbated by sunlight. The lesions can be quite painful, causing some people with the disorder to avoid sunlight altogether. Of historic interest, and this is where True Blood comes in, is that some people believe that the origin of vampires began from observation of people with this disorder. I don't know how accurate this assessment is, but it is interesting none the less. And porphyria isn't a disease that you see all that often unless you are a hematologist, so I thought I would shed light (no pun) on the subject.
No comments:
Post a Comment