Why does porphyria give neurological symptoms?

[sameeralord]

Hello everyone,

What I have read says they are exactly not sure. Can anyone say something about this, or give some link that tries to explain this. Thank you

 

[zhermes]

My understanding is that the problem isn't actually the lack of porphyrin rings (for heme groups mostly), but instead the build up of toxic intermediates in the synthetic pathways. I assume that the exact location of a problem in the pathway determines where these toxins build up; it is common for acute neurological symptoms to arise from mitochondrial problems, however---maybe that's where the problem lies.

Porphyria is fairly well studied, if you want the details I think a 'pubmed' search would be very helpful.