Thursday, July 28, 2011

A person's alveolar membranes have become thickened enough to moderately decrease the rate at which gases diff

A person's alveolar membranes have become thickened enough to moderately decrease the rate at which gases diff
A person's alveolar membranes have become thickened enough to moderately decrease the rate at which gases diffuse across them at any given partial pressure differences. Will this person necessarily have a low arterial PO2 at rest? During exercise? Briefly explain your answers. Also can you answer this question Patients with severe uncontrolled diabetes mellitus produce large quantities of certain organic acids. Predict the ventilation pattern in these patients and briefly explain why they show this pattern. Would their arterial PO2 and PCO2 increase or decrease?
Biology - 1 Answers
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the first one, im not sure, cant recall. the second one: CO2 is an biological acid because it interacts with the a bloodbound enzyme called carbonic anhydrase. this turns CO2 into carbonic acid and accounts for about 70% of all the CO2 transported in your blood. Diabetes patients often develop ketoacidosis which lowers the pH of their blood due to those organic acids. To combat this, your body attempts to decrease the amount of carbonic acid in your blood by expelling CO2 through your lungs. to do this, you need to increase your breathing rate to increase the partial pressure of O2 and decrease it for CO2. Since atmospheric CO2 is lower concentration than arterial CO2, quickly exchanging the air in your lungs will expel that higher conc. of CO2 out of the body and bring in the lower conc. of the atmosphere. this will decrease the partial pressure in the arteries through diffusion. At the same time, arterial PO2 would increase for the same reasons, atmospheric PO2 is higher than in your blood.

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