QBanks Flashcards
To integrate QBanks into Step 1 study regime. (1244 cards)
How would salicylate toxicity affect pH of a patient?
Mixed anion-gap metabolic acidosis (late) & respiratory alkalosis (early): pH usually normal.
- May be accompanied by N/V, confusion, dizziness, tinnitus, fever, and tachypnea.
- Tx: sodium bicarbonate.
A patient on antihypertensive medication presents with acute-onset respiratory difficulty along with severe circumoral, periorbtial, and facial edema without pruritus and skin rashes. What are ADRs?
ACEI:
- Angioedema (due to increased bradykinin)
- Hyperkalemiae.
- Renal insufficiency (prevents the efferent arteriole from constricting, thus decreasing the glomerula pressure and GFR).
- Can cause first-dose hypotension in patients with volume depletion (diuretic use).
The risk of cough & angioedema is much lower with ARBs (eg. valsartan, losartan).
What’s the most common kidney stones? What precipitates it?
Calcium oxalate crystals: radiopaque, dumbbell shaped stones.
- Ethylene glycol (antifreeze) ingestion.
- Vitamin C abuse.
- Hypocitraturia: Has stone-preventing effects; associated with ↓pH.
- Low dietary calcium: Dietary calcium is ingested with oxalate in food and forms insouble calcium oxalate salts in the intestinal lumen, resulting in decreased gut absorption and therefore reduced renal excretion of oxalate.
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Diet high in oxalates & Malabsorption (e.g., Crohn disease)
- Increased intraluminal fat, which will readily bind calcium –> Decrease in the calcium –> Less calcium is available to bind and trap oxalate in the gut.

A 5-year old girl presents with conjunctivitis, rash on hands & feet, cervical lymphadenopathy, strawberry tongue, and high fever. Dx & complication?
KAWASAKI
- Complications: Coronary artery aneurysms.
- Tx: Aspirin (avoid Aspirin in children with viral infection due to Reye syndrome, except for Kawasaki disease).
A 12-year-old girl with PMH of pharyngitis now presents with delayed rumbling mid-to-late diastolic murmur. Dx?
Mitral stenosis, which is often a late complication of rheumatic fever.
- In isolated MS, cardiac and pulmonary pressures proximal to the stenotic mitral valve are markedly elevated.
- However, diastolic pressure in teh left ventricle (LV) is usually near normal or even decreased with severe stenosis.
- Increased LV diastolic pressure in a patient with suspected MS suggests that the aortic valve is also dysfunctional.
- Myxomatous changes in the media of large arteries.
- Fragmentation of elastic tissue and separation of the elastic and fibromuscular components of thet unica media by small, cleft-like spaces that become filled with amorphous ECM.
*
Cystic medial degeneration
- Seen in Marfan syndrome (mutation of the fibrillin-1 gene).
- Aortic aneurysms & dissection.
- MVP.
Which lipid-lowering agent can increase HDL but has not shown to be effective in reducing mortality rate? What are possible ADRs?
Niacin(B3):
- MOA: Inhibits lipolysis (HSL) in adipose tissue.
- Increases HDL.
- Also used to treat Pellagra, caused by niacian deficiency.
- Red, flushed face (due to prostaglandins); hyperglycemia; hyperuricemia (gout).
A 10-year old boy is brought to the ER by his mother due to several days of bloody diarrhea, irritability, fatigue, and pallor. The mother mentions that they took a family trip to Mexico where her son ate a lot of food from the local street vendors.
EHEC:
- Shiga-like toxins that are capable of inhibiting protein synthesis (preventing tRNA binding to the 60s ribosomal subunit and inhibitng protein synthesis).
- Closely related to Shigella dysenteriae
- Unlike other species, does not ferment sorbitol during overnight incubation.
- AB toxin (active A subunit and 5 binding B subunits): plasmid coding for it is transmitted by a temperate bacteriophage.
- HUS: thrombocytopeniae, microangiopathic hemolytic anemiae, renal insufficiency (Creatinine)
Acid in the blood of a newborn was identified to be a leucine. Presentation and Dx?
- Maple-syrup urine disease
* Defect in branched-chain a-keto acid dehydrogenase, leading to increased leucine/isoleucine/valine. - a-keto acid dehydrogenase (in addition to pyruvate dehydrogenase and a-ketoglutata dehydrogenase) requires 5 cofactors:
- Thiamine
- Lipoate
- CoA
- FAD
- NAD
- Some patients with MSUD improves with high-dose thiamien Tx.
What’s the physiologic principle underlying BB in a patient with CAD?
- Slow AV nodal conduction, prolonging the PR interval; do not have specific ffects on QRs or QT interval durations.
- Decreases renin secretion.
A 32-year-old male patient from Peru presents with secondary achalasia (destruction of myenteric plexi in the esophagus), megacolon, and megaureter. Dx & transmission?
Chagas disease; Trypanosoma cruzi transmitted by Triatoma (reduviid) bugs.
- Nifurtimox
Oligohydramnios seen in Potter syndrome is caused by a failure of?
Development of the ureteric buds (metanephric diverticulum)*
- Derived from caudal end of mesonephric duct; gives rise to collecting tubules/ducts, major/minor calyces, renal pelvis, and the ureters.
- Interacts with metanephric mesoderm to induce differentation of glomerulus through to DCT.
Also can be secondary to ARPKD.
What pharmacologic Tx can reduce the mortality in patients with diabetic nephropathy ?
ACEI (inhibits Gq pathway) or ARB (e.g., losartan) - act by dilating the efferent arteriole, which help to decrease the intraglomerular pressure and prevent further progression of albuminuria.
What medication can be given to a hypertensive patient with BPH? And BPH only?
Doxazosin (alpha-1 antagonist); tamsulosin
Abrupt-onset gross hematuria in an otherwise healthy, young patient ?
Renal papillary necrosis:
- Sickle cell disease or trait
- Analgesics
- Acute pyelonephritis
- Diabetes

What medication is the 1st line of choice for patient presenting with high TG? What ADRs can you expect?
Fenofibrates (e.g., gemfibrozil)
- MOA:
- Upregulate LPL –> ↑ TG clearance & decreased VLDL production.
- Activates PPAR-a to induce HDL synthesis.
- ADR:
- Myopathy (especially in conjunction w/ statins)
- Cholesterol gallstones (inhibition of 7a-hydroxylase, reduces the converstion of cholesterol to bile acids. ).
Which of the following would be an effect of nadolol/propranolol/timolol but not of atenolol/esmolol/metoprolol?
Vasoconstriction of pulmonary, skeletal muscle (B2)
- Safe to use in asthmatic patients & COPD patients.
B1 adrenergic receptors are found in cardiac tissue and on renal juxtaglomerular cells, but not in vascular smooth muscle.
A 4-year-old child presents with grade II/VI holosystolic murmur at left sternal border. Dx?
VSD, the most common murmur.
- Leucine Zipper.
- Helix-loop-helix
- Zinc Finger.
- DNA binding basic region is primarily composed of basic amino acids (eg, arginine, lysine), which allow it to bind in the major groove of (-) DNA.
A 24-year-old woman complains of increased frequency of urination & burning sensation when she urinates. Denies fever, chills, flank pain. Urinalysis is positive for leukocyte estrase, nitrites, bacteria, and WBC casts. What’s the most common organism & Tx?
Still an E.Coli : A gram (-) rod that ferments lactose, forming pink colonies on McConkey agar.
- Remainder: S. saprophyticus; Proteus; Klebsiella; Enterococci.
- Tx: 3 days course of fluoroquinolone or TMP-SMX.
Cystitis can progress to become acute pyelonephritis in setting of vesicoureteral reflux (similar U/A+ flank pain/CVA tenderness/fever/chills/hematuria with casts).
Celecoxib: COX-2 inhibitor
- For patient with PUD or GI distress: celecoxib have no effect on COX-1, minimizing gastroduodenal toxicity.
- Usage of COX-2 inhibitors (celecoxib) selectively decrease PGI2, leaving the action of TxA2 unopposed. This could well result in increased CV event due to the tonic, prothrombtic action.
- Does not impair platelet aggregation.s
- Inducible enzyme that’s undetectable in most tissues under normal conditions.
Fever, erythema around the foley urine catheters/IV/prosthetic devices/peritoneal dialysis is most likely caused by?
- S. Epidermidis*
- Migrates along the tubing from the skin to the inside of the body with the help of biofilm creation.
Aminoglycoside
- Gentamicin, Neomycin, Amikacin, Tobramycin, Streptomycin
- Irreversible inhibition of initiation complex through binding of the 30S subunit; can also cause misreading of mRNA.
- Synergistic w/ B-lactam antibiotics (eg, penicillins & vancomycin): allows aminoglycosides to penetrate the gram (+) bacterial cells.
- Ototoxicity, nephrociticy, teratogen.
- Resistance: group transferases that covalently modify the antibiotics (acetylation/phosphorylation/adenylation).
A patient presents with pheochromocytoma. What agent will antagonize both the vascular and cardiac actions of hormones released from pheochromocytoma?
In pheochromocytoma, norepinphrine is released that exerts its agonist effect on α1, α2, β1 receptors:
- Labetalol is a nonselective antagonist at α- and β-receptors
- Irreversible α antagonist: phenoxybenzamie.
























































































































































































































