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Atrophy is the partial or complete wasting away of a part of the body. Causes of atrophy include mutations (which can destroy the gene to build up the organ), poor nourishment, poor circulation, loss of hormonal support, loss of nerve supply to the target organ, excessive amount of apoptosis of cells, and disuse or lack of exercise or disease intrinsic to the tissue itself.
Cellular atrophy is a decrease in cell size. If enough cells in an organ undergo atrophy the entire organ will decrease in size. Thymus atrophy during early human development (childhood) is an example of physiologic atrophy. Skeletal muscle atrophy is a
Overview of signal transduction pathways involved in apoptosis. Cell death is the event of a biological cell ceasing to carry out its functions. This may be the result of the natural process of old cells dying and being replaced by new ones, as in programmed cell death, or may result from factors such as diseases, localized injury, or the death of the organism of which the cells are part.
Cell damage (also known as cell injury) is a variety of changes of stress that a cell suffers due to external as well as internal environmental changes. Amongst other causes, this can be due to physical, chemical, infectious, biological, nutritional or immunological factors.
Cerebral atrophy is a common feature of many of the diseases that affect the brain. [1] Atrophy of any tissue means a decrement in the size of the cell, which can be due to progressive loss of cytoplasmic proteins. In brain tissue, atrophy describes a loss of neurons and the connections between them.
Hypoplasia is a congenital condition, while hyperplasia generally refers to excessive cell growth later in life. ( Atrophy , the wasting away of already existing cells, is technically the direct opposite of both hyperplasia and hypertrophy.)
The classic definition of death defines it as a state characterized by the cessation of signs of life. It is when a cell has lost the integrity of its plasma membrane and/or has undergone complete disintegration, including its nucleus, and/or its fragments have been engulfed by a neighboring cell in vivo.
Involution is the shrinking or return of an organ to a former size. At a cellular level, involution is characterized by the process of proteolysis of the basement membrane (basal lamina), leading to epithelial regression and apoptosis, with accompanying stromal fibrosis.