Scientists trace deadly cell-to-cell message chain that spreads in sepsis
Scientists trace deadly cell-to-cell message chain that spreads in sepsis
Like a poison pen, dying cells prick their neighbors with a lethal message. This may worsen sepsis, Vijay Rathinam and colleagues in the UConn School of Medicine report in the Jan. 23 issue of Cell. Their findings could lead to a new understanding of this dangerous illness.
Sepsis is one of the most frequent causes of death worldwide, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), killing 11 million people each year. It's characterized by runaway inflammation, usually sparked by an infection. It can lead to shock, multiple organ failure, and death if treatment is not rapid enough or effective.
But recent research has shown that it isn't actually the infection that causes the spiraling inflammation: it's the cells caught up in it. Even if those cells aren't infected, they act as if they are, and die. As they die, they send out messages to other cells. Those messages somehow cause the recipient cells to die.
If scientists understood what caused this deadly message chain, they might be able to stop it. And that could help heal sepsis.
The deadly message mystery may now be solved. It appears that the "messages" are a byproduct of the cells trying to stay alive.
So, an infection causes cells to die even if they aren't infected, and those cells send a death message that makes other cells do the same, as a way of trying to stay alive? Damm, biology is weird.
It really is. People often think evolution is convergent upon a supreme goal and that "the fittest survive" means only the best/strongest survive, when in reality, evolution is emergent based upon the environment, and you can be "fit" if you can survive well enough in it.
You probably already knew that, but it's something I learned in the last two years, so just throwing it out there for any passerby who didn't know.
Yeah, used to think evolution was always upwards towards a "superior form",after seeing some memes about pokemon evolutions and actual evolutions I started understanding that it's basically "whatever sticks at the moment". If being weak and stupid helped us survive more than being strong and intelligent, the species will tend to that, right?