Innate Immunity Gone Awry: Linking Microbial Infections to Chronic Inflammation and Cancer.
From: Laboratory of Gene Expression and Signal Transduction, Department of Pharmacology, UCSD School of Medicine, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA. karinoffice@ucsd.edu
Cell
- Publish Date: Feb 2006
- ISSN: 0092-8674
- Volume: 124
- Issue: 4
- Pages: 823-35
- Medium: Print
- Language: English
- Citation (JAMA): Karin Michael, Lawrence Toby, Nizet Victor, et al. Innate Immunity Gone Awry: Linking Microbial Infections to Chronic Inflammation and Cancer.. Cell Feb 2006;124:823-35
Abstract
Clinical and epidemiologic studies have suggested an association between infectious agents and chronic inflammatory disorders and cancer. Better understanding of microbial pattern-recognition receptors and innate immune signaling pathways of the host is helping to elucidate the connection between microbial infection and chronic disease. We propose that a key aspect of pathogenesis is an aberrant epithelial barrier that can be instigated by microbial toxins, environmental insults, or the genetic predisposition of the host. Loss of epithelial integrity results in activation of resident inflammatory cells by microbial invaders or endogenous ligands. When coupled with a failure of normal control mechanisms that limit leukocyte activation, a cascade is established that induces chronic inflammation and its consequences. Here, we outline this mechanistic framework and briefly review how alteration of innate immune response genes in murine models can provide insights into the potential microbial origins of diverse conditions including Crohn’s disease, psoriasis, atherosclerosis, diabetes, and liver cancer.
Mesh Headings (Keywords): Animals, Bacteria, Bacterial Infections, Humans, Immunity, Inflammation, Ligands, Mice, Models, Biological, Neoplasms, Receptors, Immunologic, Signal Transduction
Check for Full Text / PubMed Unique Identifier (PMID): 16497591
This abstract is part of PubMed, a service of the U.S. National Library of Medicine. PubMed includes more than 17 million citations from MEDLINE and other life science journals for biomedical articles. See Copyright and Disclaimers.
Linked medical terms appearing on this page are added by Healia to help readers find more information and are not part of the original PubMed document.
The data herein was last updated on July 8th, 2008 and may not reflect the most current and accurate data available from NLM.