Clinical Biochemistry (C7020)

15 credits, Level 5

Spring teaching

This module outlines the biochemical mechanisms for controlling the pathways of lipid, carbohydrate, and amino acid metabolism under different physiological and nutritional conditions and will discuss the importance of diseases arising from defects in these pathways.

Particular emphasis is placed upon the aetiology, symptoms and treatment of diseases such as:

• Type I and II diabetes mellitus
• the obesity epidemic and metabolic syndrome
• hypertension
• atherosclerosis and other lipid disorders
• inborn errors of carbohydrate and amino metabolism.

You discuss a variety of routine biochemical tests, together with their importance for the diagnosis, prognosis, monitoring and screening for disease.

This module consists of lectures, including visiting lecturers with direct experience of the clinical field, online quizzes, a problem class and practicals.

Contact hours and workload

This module is approximately 150 hours of work. This breaks down into about 34 hours of contact time and about 116 hours of independent study. The University may make minor variations to the contact hours for operational reasons, including timetabling requirements.

We regularly review our modules to incorporate student feedback, staff expertise, as well as the latest research and teaching methodology. We’re planning to run these modules in the academic year 2021/22. However, there may be changes to these modules in response to feedback, staff availability, student demand or updates to our curriculum. We’ll make sure to let you know of any material changes to modules at the earliest opportunity.