This entry was posted on 9/27/2007 12:39 PM and is filed under Research.
The potential for destruction caused by dysregulated inflammation is apparent all around us. For just a few examples of potentially devastating chronic inflammatory diseases, consider irritable bowel disease, the spectrum of inflammatory rheumatic diseases, asthma, periodontal disease, and uveitis. Dysregulated inflammation in a wound, which prevents healing, illustrates an initially appropriate response that never turns off and thus never progresses to the next phase. In addition to these clinically obvious phenotypes, there is the far more subtle role - recently recognized - played by subclinical chronic inflammation as the invisible first step in a growing list of pathologies that currently includes cardiovascular disease, atherosclerosis, cancer, diabetes, and possibly depression.
