Fascinating tour of inflammatory biology
Eight pages on PainSci cite Medzhitov 2008: 1. Icing for Injuries, Tendinitis, and Inflammation 2. The Complete Guide to IT Band Syndrome 3. The Complete Guide to Patellofemoral Pain Syndrome 4. The Complete Guide to Plantar Fasciitis 5. Pseudo-Quackery in Physical Therapy 6. Guide to Repetitive Strain Injuries 7. Massage Does Not Reduce Inflammation 8. Don’t count inflammation out of tendinopathy quite yet
PainSci commentary on Medzhitov 2008: ?This page is one of thousands in the PainScience.com bibliography. It is not a general article: it is focused on a single scientific paper, and it may provide only just enough context for the summary to make sense. Links to other papers and more general information are provided wherever possible.
Fascinating high-level tour of the subject of inflammation, highlighting the extreme diversity of biomarkers and processes, and many still blank spots on the science map. Particularly relevant to musculoskeletal health, Medhitov explains that the “inflammation” going on in tissues that are chronically stressed — as in repetitive strain injury — are basically mysterious and quite different from the “classic” inflammatory response we see in infection and trauma, and “It is unclear how applicable knowledge of infection-induced inflammation is to other types of inflammation.” Highly recommended reading for professionals.
original abstract †Abstracts here may not perfectly match originals, for a variety of technical and practical reasons. Some abstacts are truncated for my purposes here, if they are particularly long-winded and unhelpful. I occasionally add clarifying notes. And I make some minor corrections.
Inflammation underlies a wide variety of physiological and pathological processes. Although the pathological aspects of many types of inflammation are well appreciated, their physiological functions are mostly unknown. The classic instigators of inflammation — infection and tissue injury — are at one end of a large range of adverse conditions that induce inflammation, and they trigger the recruitment of leukocytes and plasma proteins to the affected tissue site. Tissue stress or malfunction similarly induces an adaptive response, which is referred to here as para-inflammation. This response relies mainly on tissue-resident macrophages and is intermediate between the basal homeostatic state and a classic inflammatory response. Para-inflammation is probably responsible for the chronic inflammatory conditions that are associated with modern human diseases.
This page is part of the PainScience BIBLIOGRAPHY, which contains plain language summaries of thousands of scientific papers & others sources. It’s like a highly specialized blog. A few highlights:
- Long-Term Effects of Repeated Injections of Local Anesthetic With or Without Corticosteroid for Lumbar Spinal Stenosis: A Randomized Trial. Friedly 2017 Arch Phys Med Rehabil.
- Cannabis-based medicines for chronic neuropathic pain in adults. Ateş 2026 Cochrane Database Syst Rev.
- Effect of exercise on depression and anxiety symptoms: systematic umbrella review with meta-meta-analysis. Munro 2026 Br J Sports Med.
- Optimizing elastic band resistance training for Metabolic Syndrome components in older adults: A systematic review, meta-analysis, and meta-regression of randomized controlled trials. Saez-Berlanga 2026 Arch Phys Med Rehabil.
- Prevalence of Tendon Rupture and Tendinopathies Among Patients with Atherosclerotic Cardiovascular Disease Derived From United States Administrative Claims Data. Gillard 2024 Cardiol Ther.