Inflammation 1 (acute) Flashcards
Define Inflammation
a nonspecific bodily response to a variety of injurious agents
name the Four cardinal manifestations of acute inflammation:
redness, swelling, heat and pain
Define Exudate: i
inflammatory extracellular fluid with high protein content, cells and cellular debris
Define Transudate:
thin acellular serous edema fluid
Define Pus:
purulent exudate important to recognize and important to culture because it usually represents infection
Define Leukocytosis:
increased number of white blood cells counted in the blood
Define Acute phase reactants:
proteins produced in abundance with inflammation, including fibrinogen and complement
Define Sepsis:
the systemic inflammatory response syndrome (SIRS) due to an infection (proven or suspected)
Describe inflammation in a general sense
- Inflammation is a reaction to injurious agents.
- **It is not a disease. **
- **It is not specific. **
- It is a nonspecific host response to something injurious. The something may be a bacterial infection, a fungal infection, a viral infection, a toxic substance or material from dead necrotic cells.
- The response, inflammation itself, can become injurious in, for instance, the acute respiratory distress syndrome.
What are the 6 common causes of inflammation?
- (1) infection,
- (2) tissue necrosis,
- (3) immune reaction,
- (4) trauma,
- (5) foreign bodies
- (6) physical and chemical agents.
What is the difference bw sign and symptom?
A symptom is a subjective experience of an aspect of a disease,
sign is an objective physical manifestation of a disease.
What type of inflammation has a rapid onset (seconds to minutes) and short duration (minutes to a few days)?
acute inflammation
Other than redness, heat, swelling and pain, what is another cardinal symptom/sign of acute inflammation?
loss of function, is sometimes added.
There are five distinctive forms of inflammation: name them. Do they have to happen together?
(1) purulent (suppurative), (2) abscessing (necrotizing), (3) fibrinous, (4) serous and (5) granulomatous.
They are not mutually exclusive.
Inflammation is a complex response. There are 3 components of inflammation: name them
- a vascular response,
- a leukocyte (white blood cell) response
- a systemic (total body) response.
The vascular component consists of what?
What does the vascular component allow?
dilatation and increased permeability.
This vascular response permits an outpouring of fluid, plasma proteins and leukocytes (primarily neutrophils) from the blood into the extracellular space.
The fluid which pours out in acute inflammation can evident of what it contains. Name 3 common manifestations
thin (“serous”),
thick with abundant protein (“fibrinous”)
thick like pea soup with protein and inflammatory cells (“purulent”).
What is the liquid portion of blood that has clotted and been centrifuged to separate the clotted cells and proteins?
serum
Why is serum thin?
Serum is thin because it has a low protein content (and no cells).
Define Plasma. How is fibrin related?
is the liquid portion of blood that has been anticoagulated and centrifuged, leaving a protein-rich liquid portion including the blood clotting factors.
Fibrin is one of those clotting factors.
Describe Serous inflammation. give example
a form of usually acute inflammation marked by an outpouring of a thin fluid from blood vessels or mesothelium
[the lining of the chest or abdominal cavities] (effusion) or a skin blister (effusion into space created between the epidermis and dermis by burn or virus).
describe Fibrinous inflammation
a form of usually acute inflammation featuring deposition of fibrin-rich exudate, on pleura, pericardium, peritoneum or meninges, or in the interstitium of any tissue.
Define edema
Edema is tissue swelling due to accumulation of water.
Purulent inflammation is also called suppurative, although some call it suppurative only when it is also necrotizing. What type of inflammation? produces what? caused by what?
It is usually acute and features production of abundant pus (neutrophils, necrotic cellular debris and edema fluid). It is commonly caused by infection with pyogenic (pus-producing) bacteria.
Describe pus in general
It is thick, opaque and variably colored (light green, yellow, tan, crème, off-white).
Pus usually represents infection, so the usual thing to do with it is send a sample to the microbiology laboratory for them to isolate and identify the infecting organism (“culture” it).
Describe pus wrt mucous and blood
Pus can be mixed with mucus. Mucus is grey, slimy, and stringy. Mucopurulent exudate has a spectrum from mostly pus to mostly mucus.
Pus can also be mixed with blood. Blood has a spectrum from red to blue and can solidify (clot). The mixture of blood and pus is commonly pink.
Defects in leukocyte function predispose patients to what?
patients to infections.
leukocyte adhesion deficiency-1 and -2, chronic granulomatous disease, myeloperoxidase deficiency, Chediak-Higashi syndrome, and cryopyrin-associated periodic fever syndromes, which are all rare conditions, cause what?
Congenital leukocyte defects
diabetes mellitus, hemodialysis, malnutrition, and leukemia, which are common, especially diabetes mellitus cause type of defects?
Acquired leukocyte defects are caused by
T/F Inflammation, acute or chronic, has systemic effects on the patient as a whole person
true
The four most important of the systemic effects of acute inflammation (the acute phase response) are:
(1) fever (or hypothermia),
(2) tachycardia (rapid heart rate),
(3) hyperventilation (tachypnea [rapid respiratory rate])
(4) leukocytosis (more white blood cells in circulation in the blood)
The acute phase response is largely mediated what? give specifics
by cytokines
especially IL-1, TNF-a and IL-6
The acute phase response includes changes in what?
plasma protein levels, with increased C-reactive protein, amyloid A, fibrinogen and other proteins.
What is the effect on albumin wrt acute inflammation?
- acute phase response includes changes in plasma protein levels.
- To make more acute phase reactants, the liver has to make less of other proteins, whose level falls as a result.
- Chief among these negative acute phase reactants is albumin.
Other than a decrease in albumin production, what else is altered as a result of acute phase response?
- causes changes in lipid metabolism,
- a negative nitrogen balance,
- changes in hormone synthesis,
- decreased serum iron and zinc,
- elevated white blood cell and platelet counts
- decreased red blood cell production.
What effect does inflammation have on metabolism?
Inflammation switches the body from anabolism to catabolism, and, **initially, a hypermetabolic state. **
Because the acute phase response switches to hypermetabolic and from anabolism to catabolism, what is the effect toward the catabolic molecules? What does this ultimately cause?
The levels of epinephrine, norepinephrine, cortisol and glucagon go up, and skeletal muscle is broken down.
Hepatic synthesis of protein goes up, but skeletal muscle is broken down faster than the amino acids are utilized for protein synthesis, so nitrogen is lost in the urine and the patient goes into a negative nitrogen balance.
***The most important systemic effects of inflammation are alterations what?***
***alterations of body temperature, heart rate, respiratory rate and white blood cell count, usually increases of them. ***
Define the most common form of leukocytosis
Leukocytosis consisting of neutrophils is called neutrophilia and is associated with **bacterial infections as the cause. **
Leukocytosis consisting of lymphocytes is associated with what type of infections?
Viral infections
leukocytosis consisting of eosinophils is associated with what type of infection?
allergies and parasitic infestations
What are Dohle bodies?
patches of dilated endoplasmic reticulum, which appear as “sky-blue peripheral cytoplasmic puddles”
Define and Describe toxic granulations. What do they look like and commonly found?
immature primary cytoplasmic granules characteristic of less mature granulocytes
Toxic granulations are dark blue or purple granules, bigger and coarser than the small, faintly stained neutral granules characteristic of segmented neutrophils.
Predictably, toxic granulations are more common in immature neutrophils.
Severe acute inflammation can cause neutrophils to have what?
(1) Dohle bodies
(2) toxic granulations
What are Acute phase reactants?
proteins produced in abundance with inflammation