The Science behind inflammation - Part I

There is so much information about inflammation and what it does to our body so I'm going to try to narrow the information down a bit.

I dusted off the old textbooks from physician assistant school (Yes I still own them and no I'm not using them to put my plants on - even if my fellow alum classmates might think - uh-hum...Ken and Terry) and began to read again about the process of inflammation. I did have a sense of fear too as it brought back memories of those awful tests and even my Boards - how did I make it this far? So I started reading good ole Cecil Physiology book and noticed all the highlighters and underlined words - Thanks Becca for helping me study! Also, thanks to my fellow roommates for letting me have books, post-it notes and notecards all over the apartments to help me study and to listen to my ravings of what I learned in class. (Rebekah and Erin)

But after I got over my initial fear, this is what I remembered. This will be in 2 parts to make things a little more scaled down and I'm going to try to explain it as easy as I can.

****NOTE**** there will not be a test after this!

Acute inflammation is a natural and good process in our body. As soon as you slice your finger open, the inflammatory cascade starts. 5 cardinal signs set up to let your body know it is doing the right thing - pain, heat, redness, swelling, loss of function. Inflammation is initiated in cells where some important players come into effect including macrophages, dendritic cells, histiocytes, Kupffer cells and mastocytes. Each one has a specific function in inflammation and release inflammatory mediators responsible for the clinical signs of inflammation. The entire process begins laying down scar tissue and "healing" the site of injury. The acute inflammatory response requires constant stimulation to continue but the inflammation stops once the stimulus has been removed (this is important in chronic inflammation so take notes).

Another important factor is the Chemokine. Chemokines are small proteins excreted by cells in simply help guide things in our body to it's place. Think of it as a boat that is carrying different cargo to different places. Some are good and are used to help with tissue growth and supply an adequate amount of blood supply to an injured site. Some, however are bad, and are inflammatory which guides cells to form disease such as gout or even cancer. In the malignancy context, chemokines play diverse effects, most of them deriving from their ability to induce cell migration. One key factor in chemokines is in determining the cancer establishment and progression. Depending on their specific expression pattern on target cells, on tumor type and on tumor microenvironment factors, several chemokines support malignancy, while others can at times inhibit this process. The metastatic spread of tumors are thought to be mediated in part by chemokines and inflammation does have a link to metastatic spread.

Ok everyone - take a break because my brain hurts too! I promise this will get better but I felt like we needed to have an understanding of the science part of inflammation.

So many other players are involved in inflammation but I don't want to make this too complicated. Basically, inflammation is a double-edged sword and is a way of healing for our body, but chronic inflammation can lead to many diseases such as heart disease, fatigue, diabetes, cancer, obesity and many others.

The next post I am going to try to explain how specific diseases could be triggered or even made worse through inflammation.