This proposed thread is about those amoeboid creatures living in our bloodstreams we call "macrophages." Like pet fleas, they can befriend us or they can bite us.
As an old hoot (I'll be threescore years and ten next March), I suffer from certain symptoms associated with inflammatory diseases. What I notice about my symptoms is how they seem to radiate or communicate from one place to another in my body: one symptom somewhere seems to spark others elsewhere in places that I know to be particularly sensitive. For example, I recently had an attack of diverticulitis”inflammations in my colon (little sores) that are common to older people. I am quite familiar with the symptoms. (I can even show you pictures from a colonoscopy, but you don't really want to see them.) Now, in this recent attack, as with others I have known, my diverticulitis seemed to spread somehow to my right knee: I developed an extremely bad case of tendonitis there. But, now, without taking anything more than aspirin and ibuprofen, the tendonitis is gone and so is the diverticulitis. In earily attacks, the tendonitis developed in my ankle, the top of my foot, or in my big toe”always on the right side.
Last week, while searching the Internet for information on my severe knee pain, I ran across
this recent article in Science Daily: "New Protein Family Implicated In Inflammatory Diseases"
quote:
"What we found is a family of proteins that control macrophage activation," researcher Mingui Fu said from a laboratory in the Burnett School of Biomedical Sciences at UCF.
Macrophages are the body's self-cleaners. They live in the bloodstream and are called to action when bacteria or other foreign objects attack. Scientists have been studying what triggers them, but no one has come up with a step-by-step process yet. Once triggered, macrophages travel to the infection site and gobble up the invader, helping the body heal. The attack is manifested by inflammation at the infection site.
When everything works right, the inflammation goes away and the person's health improves. But when macrophages go awry, they can cause more harm than good. Sometimes the macrophages mistake the body's own organs for invaders and attack, and that can cause arthritis or some forms of cancer. Sometimes the cleaners fail to detect threats, such as malignant cancer cells, which then go unregulated and can turn into fatal tumors
For three days, while I was suffering the annoying symptoms of diverticulitis, my knee was so crippled up with tendonitis I couldn't bend it, climb stairs, or drive my car. But it went away like a horde of gnawing locusts and left nothing in its wake”completely gone, as was my diverticulitis.
Now I have a new theory about what was wrong with me. Given this discovery of the trigger protein that releases macrophages into the bloodstream, I think the pain I felt in my knee was actually an attack by those "protective" macrophages on one of my sensitive tendons. Those macrophages went awry and attacked my knee like a swarming school of piranha. This makes me wonder just how many of our inflammatory illness can be attributed to these rogue predators of otherwise healthy tissue. And maybe this discovery of the activation protein will lead to ways for keeping those little buggers from chewing on my right leg.
Any thoughts on this?
[Admins: do we have a Heath thread for this one?]
”HM
"Vegetarian": An old Indian word for "bad hunter." ”Sarah Palin's bumper sticker