Biological Pathway
Inflammatory Signaling
Last updated
The messaging system by which cells raise, sustain and shut down an inflammatory response. Sensors detect damage or infection, transcription factors such as NF-kB switch genes on, and cytokines, small signalling proteins including TNF-alpha and the interleukins, carry the message between cells. Resolution has its own active signals; it is not simply the first set going quiet.
Why it matters here
A great many peptide claims are ultimately claims about this pathway, and the same compound can read as anti-inflammatory in one tissue and pro-inflammatory in another, so the tissue and the model matter as much as the direction.
What it is not
Inflammation as used in wellness writing, a vague systemic badness, is not this pathway, which is a specific and necessary process that also closes wounds and clears infection. A fall in one cytokine in a dish is not reduced inflammation, and suppression is not automatically an improvement.
Also called
- inflammation
- inflammatory pathway
- nf-kb signalling
- cytokine signalling
NF-kB signalling and cytokine signalling name components of this pathway rather than the whole of it, and are often used as though they were the whole.
Compounds carrying this term
None on file yet. This term is in the controlled vocabulary but no compound record currently uses it — which is a statement about our coverage, not about the term.