Raised Inflammatory Markers Somewhat Correlate with Incidence of Age-Related Disease

Onset, progression, and resolution of inflammation are all driven by the interaction of many different complex signaling processes. The immune system as a whole is highly complex, an array of many different interacting populations of specialized cells. Nonetheless, there are a few individual circulating signal proteins that, to some degree at least, tend to reflect overall inflammatory status. Not reliably, but enough to produce correlations in patient populations of any reasonable size. Today's open access paper is a survey of the literature on inflammatory cytokines IL-6, TNF, and IL-1β, pulling reported measures and patient comorbidities from many different published studies. As one might expect, there is a correlation between raised levels of inflammatory cytokines and the presence of age-related disease. Chronic inflammation is a feature of aging, and it is known to accelerate the progression of all of the common age-related conditions. The correlation isn't large or strong, however, indicating the point made above: individual cytokines are not great measures of the state of the immune system, and what they do in fact reflect varies widely from individual to individual. The state of chronic, unresolved inflammation is too complex to be measured so simply. Level of IL-6, TNF, and IL-1β and age-related diseases: a systematic review and meta-analysis Aging facilitates a pro-inflammatory state by disrupting the peripheral immune system, which leads ...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs