Introduction:
The Continuum of a Unified Theory of Disease proposed the idea that one of the mechanisms responsible for chronic inflammatory diseases is the indiscriminate suppression of efficient acute inflammatory conditions, especially fever with antipyretic drugs [1]. It further posited that in the presence of low-grade chronic inflammation, the organism is incapable of producing efficient acute inflammation in response to pathogenic stimuli. Many immunological studies have provided evidence for the necessity to preserve the acute inflammatory phenomenon in its entirety [2-4]. The mutual exclusion of the two phenomena has been observed in some conditions [5-7], while other studies have used acute inflammation to cure the body of a chronic condition [8].
While Sibley et al. conducted a study to examine the incidence of viral infections in patients with multiple sclerosis and found that multiple sclerosis somehow ‘protected’ the patients from viral infections [5], no other study, as far as the authors are aware, has investigated chronic inflammatory diseases in general for this phenomenon.
We hypothesised that efficient acute and chronic inflammation are mutually exclusive. We sought to test this by examining the existing clinical data from a private homeopathic medical practice, with the primary objective to investigate whether acute and chronic inflammatory conditions occur concurrently.