Origin and physiological roles of inflammation
PainSci summary of 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 at the bottom of the page, as often as possible. ★★★★★?5-star ratings are for sentinel studies, excellent experiments with meaningful results. Ratings are a highly subjective opinion, and subject to revision at any time. If you think this paper has been incorrectly rated, please let me know.
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.
related content
These three articles on PainScience.com cite Medzhitov 2008 as a source:
- PS Pseudo-quackery in Chronic Pain Care — A field with a large gray zone between overt quackery and evidence-based care in musculoskeletal medicine
- PS Repetitive Strain Injuries Tutorial — Five surprising and important facts about repetitive strain injuries like carpal tunnel syndrome, tendinitis, or iliotibial band syndrome
- PS Massage Does Not Reduce Inflammation — The making of a new massage myth from a high-tech study of muscle samples after intense exercise
