Jessica Hamerman, PhD, discusses how the inflammatory response is regulated. Inflammation is the start of every immune response. If you have an infection, you need inflammation to start the immune response. Macrophage cells are important in detecting infection and signaling how large of an immune response is appropriate. However, sometimes there is a mistake and inflammation occurs without infection. This happens in cases of inflammatory disease such as gout, in which there is inflammation in joints in the absence of infection. We are learning how inflammasomes control inflammation in response to infection and how the response goes wrong in the cases of inflammatory diseases.
