ABSTRACT
()of recessive hereditary diseases caused by the dysfunction of enzymes required for fatty acids to enter mitochondria or fatty acid beta-oxidation,including carnitine transport disorders and fatty acid beta-oxidation disorders. Clinical symptoms are non-specific,involving multiple organs,such as liver,myocardium,skeletal muscle,brain and kidney. Most FAOD patients diagnosed by newborn screening have no clinical symptoms or mild symptoms through early intervention management,but they are prone to acute onset or even sudden death under stress conditions such as hunger and exercise. Long-term follow-up and management can effectively reduce the mortality and morbidity rate of FAOD.
ABSTRACT
Inborn errors of fatty acid mitochondrial oxidation (FAOD) have drawn considerable attention in recent years because of rapid pace of discovery of new defects and an ever-increasing spectrum of clinical phenotypes. This review describes a clinical and biochemical phenotypes, diagnosis and treatment of FAOD. Some of FAOD can not be detected by conventional biochemical investigations, even when a patient is symptomatic with fasting intolerance or functional failure of fatty acid dependent tissue (s). Diagnosis must ultimately be based on direct assay of the involved enzyme, however, preliminary indicators may come from determination of carnitine and intermediate metabolites in plasma, profiling of urine organic acid, and radioisotopic screening assays with lymphocytes or cultured fibroblasts. We are faced with the following major challenges: whether to include FAOD in newborn screening programs, the investigation of the rules played by individual disorders in maternal complication during pregnancy, sudden and unexpected death in early life, and pediatric acute/fulminant liver failure.