RESEARCHING INFLAMMATION
Understanding a problem of civilization
For some decades past, people in the industrialized nations have become ill with chronic inflammation of almost all their organs. Millions are affected today and the numbers are constantly increasing. This has made these internal conflagrations a central challenge to 21st century medicine because there is still little known about them: neither what triggers inflammation - nor how it can be cured.
It is still one of Nature's secrets, and probably of the evolution of Homo sapiens. German inflammation researchers plan to coax the secret out. What is certain is that the genetic predisposition contributes to chronic inflammation but is in no sense the sole cause. The hereditary factors of the human species have not changed significantly in the last few centuries. The environment plays a supporting role. Our so-called "civilization" brings not only benefits: there is also a lack of exercise, additives in foods and stress. But is that the only reason why the immune system, which has functioned reliably for centuries, is now setting fires throughout the body? Scarcely imaginable.
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Explaining the epidemic of the modern age
It is certain that bacteria and viruses mutate - and ultimately plague the body with unfamiliar attacks. But are these microbes the only things that cause the human body's defense mechanism to turn against its owner and destroy his internal organs at the same time? That's not the whole story either. Above all it must be something that has produced the phenomenon of "inflammation" in the past few decades: to understand this, each piece of the jigsaw will now be examined. Everything that could contribute in any way to understanding the internal conflagration:
- The genetic peculiarities of inflammation patients will be identified. Thousands of their hereditary factors will be examined in minute detail and the data stored in biological databases. Hereditary predispositions - disease genes - are already known today for every inflammatory illness.
- The inflammation pathogens will be examined meticulously: the bacteria's tiniest modules, their molecules, will be decoded. These microstructures are what the human immune system actually reacts to - and is doing so increasingly incorrectly.
- The activation of the body's own defenses will be analyzed in detail: the mechanisms of those human cells that initiate the immune response will be clarified. Which signals are transmitted in an individual cell before inflammation occurs?
- Interventions in the inflammation processes will be simulated on elaborate models: the process of inflammatory events in genetically engineered experimental animals will be observed in detail.
This systematic approach is the only way to resolve the epidemic of the modern era: Germany has declared this to be one of its national research priorities for the next ten years, with an internationally unique expertise of around 150 highly specialized scientists - in the "Inflammation Research Excellence Cluster".