Just one protein could derail healthy cells and promote inflammation. This is what Danish researchers discovered while working on the chronic inflammatory process that causes inflammatory conditions like arthritis, which affects the joint and bones, or psoriasis, a disease of the skin.
Inflammation occurs in response to the presence of a pathogen. The body then seeks to defend itself to neutralize this bacteria or virus. But when immune cells overreact, it leads to chronic inflammation. “By analyzing blood cells, we observed the presence of a particular protein called TL1A that causes healthy cells to behave like those seen in chronic inflammation,” Dr. Kirsten Reichwald of the Department of Veterinary Disease Biology, Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences at the University of Copenhagen. We are not far from solving the mystery of inflammation. ”
A treatment to block the protein
It was the analysis of blood cells from 50 healthy donors that revealed the essential role of the TL1A protein in the onset of inflammation. The next step for the researchers will be to find a biological treatment capable of stopping the inflammation by blocking the activity of this protein.
