Hello everyone my name is Kwabina Larbi and I am a student in the Masters of Translational Pharmacology Program at The Ohio State University. This is my final blog entry and it covers some of the topics we discussed throughout the semester. We were asked to create a blog post on pesticides, metals, solvent, and plants and animal toxicity. Below is a brief summary of my blog entry.
Pesticide toxicity: Nicotine is what I talked about in this post. Nicotine is a highly addictive chemical compound present in the tobacco plant. Nicotine is well known to have serious systemic side effects on the peripheral and central nervous systems. I talked about the source, biotransformation, toxicokinetic, carcinogenicity, mechanism of action, target organ(s), signs and symptoms of toxicity, genetic susceptibility or heritable traits, historic or unique exposure, biomarkers, and treatment of nicotine. To read more about my nicotine blog entry, click on this link: https://u.osu.edu/larbi-7/2021/05/25/pesticide-blog-nicotine/
Metal toxicity: For my metal toxicity, I wrote about lead (Pb). During my research on lead, I found out lead poisoning, for the most part, is asymptomatic. The vast majority of cases, therefore, go undiagnosed and untreated. I talked about the source, biotransformation, toxicokinetic, carcinogenicity, mechanism of action, target organ(s), and symptoms of toxicity, genetic susceptibility or heritable traits, historic or unique exposure, biomarkers, deficiency and treatment of lead toxicity. Click on this link to read more about my lead blog entry: https://u.osu.edu/larbi-7/metal-blog-entry-leadpb/
Solvent toxicity: In the solvent category, my choice was diethylene glycol. Diethylene glycol is an important industrial chemical that, when managed appropriately, has numerous safe uses. The following components were discussed: source/uses, toxicokinetic, carcinogenicity, mechanism of action, target organ(s), Signs and symptoms of toxicity, biomarkers, Historical or unique exposures, and treatment of diethylene glycol toxicity. Read more about my diethylene blog by following this link: https://u.osu.edu/larbi-7/2021/07/06/diethylene-glycol-blog-entry/
Plant and animal toxicity: So, for this blog, I chose plant toxicity and the plant I wrote about was foxglove. This was an interesting choice because ingestion of any parts of the foxglove plant can result in severe poisoning. Yet, the plant is extracted to produce a very powerful cardiac medicine called digoxin. In this blog, I included a video that shows how digoxin is extracted from the leaves. To read more about my blog on foxglove, click on this link: https://u.osu.edu/larbi-7/2021/07/28/foxglove-blog-entry/