Summary
Introduction: Continuum theory states that suppression of efficient
acute inflammation is one of the mechanisms responsible for the onset of
chronic low-grade inflammation, and in the presence of chronic
inflammation, an organism is not capable of an efficient acute
inflammatory response to pathogenic stimuli.
Materials and methods: We investigated medical records from a large
clinical database to assess whether chronic and acute inflammation were
mutually exclusive. To evaluate this question, we gathered data on age,
current diagnosis, comorbidities and last high fever.
Results: A total of 927 cases of chronic inflammatory diseases were
investigated. A strong association was found between increasing age and
a reduction in concurrent acute and chronic inflammation (chi-squared
statistic 51.26; p< .00001). Twenty-one individual cases were
examined for the pattern of acute and chronic inflammatory diseases. In
most cases, there was a clear increase in acute inflammatory conditions
as chronic diseases improved.
Conclusions: This retrospective study showed a strong association of
decreasing concurrent acute and chronic inflammatory states with
increasing age, and a possible mutual exclusivity of efficient acute and
chronic inflammation was indicated. Since ageing is a low-grade chronic
inflammatory process, it is possible that chronic inflammation precludes
efficient acute inflammation, which indicates that there is a need to
reconsider the manner of handling of acute inflammation in the
population.