Gaucher disease is characterized by storage of glucosylceramide in lysosomes of tissue macrophages as the result of an autosomal recessively inherited deficiency in glucocerebrosidase. Progressive accumulation of these glycolipid-laden Gaucher cells causes a variety of debilitating symptoms. The disease can be effectively treated by costly intravenous infusions with recombinant glucocerebrosida...

BACKGROUND Some, but not all, reports suggest that patients with Gaucher disease are at increased risk of developing malignancies, particularly hematopoietic tumors. The aim of this study was to assess the pattern of Gaucher disease and subsequent malignancies among male veterans admitted to US Veterans Affairs hospitals. METHODS Among 832 294 African American and 3 668 983 white male veteran...

Gaucher disease is an inherited disorder caused by a deficiency in the lysosomal hydrolase glucocerebrosidase. There is a wide spectrum of clinical presentations, with the most common features being hepatosplenomegaly, skeletal disease, and cytopenia. Gaucher disease has been classified into three broad phenotypes based upon the presence or absence of neurological involvement: Type 1 (nonneuron...

A cloned fragment of human glucocerebrosidase cDNA has been used as a probe to study restriction polymorphisms in the region of the gene for Gaucher disease. Variability in the size of fragments produced by digestion with the restriction endonucleases Pvu II and Kpn I was discovered. The Pvu II polymorphism was found to be a very prevalent one with a gene frequency of 0.65 for the Pv1.1- allele...

Gaucher disease is caused by a deficiency of glucocerebrosidase. Patients with Gaucher disease are divided into three major phenotypes: chronic nonneuronopathic, acute neuronopathic, and chronic neuronopathic, based on symptoms of the nervous system, the severity of symptoms, and the age of disease onset. The characteristics of patients with acute neuronopathic- and chronic neuronopathic-type G...

Gaucher disease is an inherited enzyme deficiency resulting in the lysosomal accumulation of specific glycolipids in macrophages and, in some cases, neurons. While current treatments are effective at reducing this glycolipid storage in macrophages, they are expensive and ineffective in treating neurological manifestations of the disease, driving the search for novel therapeutics. Moreover, muta...

Perinatal-lethal Gaucher disease is very rare and is considered a variant of type 2 Gaucher disease that occurs in the neonatal period. The most distinct features of perinatal-lethal Gaucher disease are non-immune hydrops fetalis. Less common signs of the disease are hepatosplenomegaly, ichthyosis and arthrogryposis. We report a case of Gaucher's disease (type 2) diagnosed in a newborn who pres...

In Gaucher disease (glucosylceramide lipidosis), deficiency of glucocerebrosidase causes pathological storage of glucosylceramide, particularly in the spleen. A comparative biochemical and immunological analysis has therefore been made of glucocerebrosidase in spleens from normal subjects (n = 4) and from Gaucher disease patients with non-neuronopathic (n = 5) and neuronopathic (n = 5) phenotyp...

Gaucher disease is an autosomal recessively inherited lysosomal storage disease in which a deficiency of glucocerebrosidase is associated with the accumulation of glucocerebroside in reticuloendothelial cells. Clinically, 3 types of Gaucher disease have been defined on the basis of the presence or absence of neurological symptoms. The frequency of gallbladder involvement is reportedly greater i...

Gaucher disease, a recessive inherited metabolic disorder caused by defects in the gene encoding glucosylceramidase (GlcCerase), can be divided into three subtypes according to the appearance of symptoms associated with central nervous system involvement. We now identify a protein, glycoprotein non-metastatic B (GPNMB), that acts as an authentic marker of brain pathology in neurological forms o...