Homeostasis
Regarding Immunological Responses
In a study
published this year in October, scientists found that the body maintains some
of its defenses against sickness longer than previously thought. Mice were
injected with bacteria that caused peritonitis. Humans were also monitored in
the study and the scientists observed people who had some sort of sickness and
a subsequent immune response. What they found was that the levels of T cells in
the mice and humans stayed elevated for a longer period of time than thought
and the inflammation also stayed high. This was thought to be a way to keep the
resistance against other infections high so that the likelihood of there being
another infection shortly after was significantly decreased. However, the
elevated levels of inflammation was thought to have side effects that weren’t
good. These high inflammation levels made the body seem like it was under more
stress than it needed to be and so some of the mice experienced immune related
failure even after the bacteria cleared.
This study
also contained material that can be discussed in terms of ethical practices.
Although the study was cleared by an ethics board, the scientists still
injected these mice with some bacteria that caused some of the mice to die. The
infection itself was supposedly painless but I imagine the following problems
related to the infection were not. I’m sure that ethics in medical and biological
studies have greatly improved, but there is always room to improve. People
within the field need to hold each other accountable and not let poor ethics become
part of the culture.
What I
though was interesting about this study was how it related to our semester long
discussion of homeostasis in living organisms. At one point the study called
the prolonged inflammation a mal-adaption and I wonder why something like this
would have developed.
Motwani, M. P., Newson, J.,
Kwong, S., Richard-Loendt, A., Colas, R., Dalli, J., & Gilroy, D. W.
(2017). Prolonged immune alteration following resolution of acute inflammation
in humans. PLoS ONE, 12(10), e0186964.
http://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0186964
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