AS PARACELSUS first pointed out in the 16th century, it is the dose that makes the poison. Inflammation, in particular, is vital to fighting infection or healing wounds. If it lingers, however, it can cause more harm than good. Chronic inflammation often impedes the very healing that it is meant to promote. Many drugs have been invented to combat that problem, but none is as effective as doctors would like. Now, as they describe in a paper in ACS Macro Letters, a team led by Mitsuhiro Ebara at the National Institute for Materials Science in Japan have come up with a new approach. They have worked out how to persuade cells in inflamed tissues to believe that other cells nearby have just committed suicide.
Cells can suffer chaotic deaths or orderly ones. Chaotic deaths are the end result of a process called necrosis, in which toxins, pathogens or other forms of damage cause a cell to fail...Continue reading
Source: Science and technology http://ift.tt/2x2YNOz
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