Inflammation is one of the body's superpowers. It helps us fight off infections and heal wounds. "If you don't have inflammation, then you'll die," Ed Rainger, a professor who studies chronic inflammation at the University of Birmingham in the U.K., told Live Science. "It's as simple as that." But if it transitions from a short-term response to one that lingers for months or years, chronic inflammation can fuel diseases such as cirrhosis, rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and heart disease. In the past, doctors tried to treat these diseases by shutting down all inflammation, which has nasty side effects and doesn't always work. But now, scientists are designing treatments that don't eliminate inflammation altogether but rather reprogram the cells that fuel it. And in diseases like cancer, where tumors hijack the healing side of inflammation to fuel their growth, new treatments are instead taking the opposite approach — pushing inflammation back into a fighting state so that it can better attack these mutated cells. Depending on the context, inflammation can be seen as helpful or harmful, but thanks to new research, in either case, it can be brought back under control. "If you can do that, then you can let the immune system and the inflammatory response get on with it, just in a normal way," Rainger said. Read more...
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