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Metabolic Shifts as the Hallmark of Most Common Diseases: The Quest for the Underlying Unity

A hyper-specialization characterizes modern medicine with the consequence of classifying the various diseases of the body into unrelated categories. Such a broad diversification of medicine goes in the opposite direction of physics, which eagerly looks for unification. We argue that unification shou...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Schwartz, Laurent, Henry, Marc, Alfarouk, Khalid O., Reshkin, Stephan J., Radman, Miroslav
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8068795/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33921428
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijms22083972
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author Schwartz, Laurent
Henry, Marc
Alfarouk, Khalid O.
Reshkin, Stephan J.
Radman, Miroslav
author_facet Schwartz, Laurent
Henry, Marc
Alfarouk, Khalid O.
Reshkin, Stephan J.
Radman, Miroslav
author_sort Schwartz, Laurent
collection PubMed
description A hyper-specialization characterizes modern medicine with the consequence of classifying the various diseases of the body into unrelated categories. Such a broad diversification of medicine goes in the opposite direction of physics, which eagerly looks for unification. We argue that unification should also apply to medicine. In accordance with the second principle of thermodynamics, the cell must release its entropy either in the form of heat (catabolism) or biomass (anabolism). There is a decreased flow of entropy outside the body due to an age-related reduction in mitochondrial entropy yield resulting in increased release of entropy in the form of biomass. This shift toward anabolism has been known in oncology as Warburg-effect. The shift toward anabolism has been reported in most diseases. This quest for a single framework is reinforced by the fact that inflammation (also called the immune response) is involved in nearly every disease. This strongly suggests that despite their apparent disparity, there is an underlying unity in the diseases. This also offers guidelines for the repurposing of old drugs.
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spelling pubmed-80687952021-04-26 Metabolic Shifts as the Hallmark of Most Common Diseases: The Quest for the Underlying Unity Schwartz, Laurent Henry, Marc Alfarouk, Khalid O. Reshkin, Stephan J. Radman, Miroslav Int J Mol Sci Perspective A hyper-specialization characterizes modern medicine with the consequence of classifying the various diseases of the body into unrelated categories. Such a broad diversification of medicine goes in the opposite direction of physics, which eagerly looks for unification. We argue that unification should also apply to medicine. In accordance with the second principle of thermodynamics, the cell must release its entropy either in the form of heat (catabolism) or biomass (anabolism). There is a decreased flow of entropy outside the body due to an age-related reduction in mitochondrial entropy yield resulting in increased release of entropy in the form of biomass. This shift toward anabolism has been known in oncology as Warburg-effect. The shift toward anabolism has been reported in most diseases. This quest for a single framework is reinforced by the fact that inflammation (also called the immune response) is involved in nearly every disease. This strongly suggests that despite their apparent disparity, there is an underlying unity in the diseases. This also offers guidelines for the repurposing of old drugs. MDPI 2021-04-12 /pmc/articles/PMC8068795/ /pubmed/33921428 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijms22083972 Text en © 2021 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Perspective
Schwartz, Laurent
Henry, Marc
Alfarouk, Khalid O.
Reshkin, Stephan J.
Radman, Miroslav
Metabolic Shifts as the Hallmark of Most Common Diseases: The Quest for the Underlying Unity
title Metabolic Shifts as the Hallmark of Most Common Diseases: The Quest for the Underlying Unity
title_full Metabolic Shifts as the Hallmark of Most Common Diseases: The Quest for the Underlying Unity
title_fullStr Metabolic Shifts as the Hallmark of Most Common Diseases: The Quest for the Underlying Unity
title_full_unstemmed Metabolic Shifts as the Hallmark of Most Common Diseases: The Quest for the Underlying Unity
title_short Metabolic Shifts as the Hallmark of Most Common Diseases: The Quest for the Underlying Unity
title_sort metabolic shifts as the hallmark of most common diseases: the quest for the underlying unity
topic Perspective
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8068795/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33921428
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijms22083972
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