Focus on Inflammation

The term inflammation , from the Latin inflammare (to set on fire), was first used 2000 years ago by the Roman encyclopedist Aulus Cornelius Celsus, who documented the 4 cardinal signs of inflammation: rubor et tumor cum calore et dolore (redness and swelling with heat and pain). Two centuries later, the Greek physician Galen promoted the idea that inflammation, especially pus, was a beneficial response to injury. This view persisted until the 19th century, when Rudolf Virchow, who considered inflammation a pathological condition, added loss of function ( functio laesa ) to the list as the fifth cardinal sign of inflammation. Nowadays, inflammation is defined as “a complex set of interactions among soluble factors and cells that can arise in any tissue in response to traumatic, infectious, postischemic, toxic or autoimmune injury.”1 It plays a central role in cardiovascular disease, and patients experiencing inflammatory disorders of various causes, including autoimmunity, are now …