Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

Clinical immunology

Culprits with evolutionary ties

Nature volume 464, pages 41–42 (2010)Cite this article

Subjects

The cellular organelles we know as mitochondria are thought to have originated as symbiotic bacteria. Indeed, the two use common mechanisms to trigger innate immune responses to injury and infection, respectively.

Serious physical injury, or trauma, is a major cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide1. Patients who survive the initial trauma, through medical and surgical interventions, often remain critically ill. One life-threatening post-traumatic complication is the systemic inflammatory response syndrome (SIRS), which is characterized by shock and compromised function of several organs. Clinically, symptoms of post-traumatic SIRS include fever, increased heart rate and low blood pressure (shock) — complications that also occur during the systemic inflammatory response to severe infection, known as sepsis. The molecular mechanism that underlies the development of SIRS after trauma and the cause of the similarity between post-traumatic and septic SIRS have been poorly understood. In this issue, Zhang et al.2 report on one of the pathways that triggers trauma-associated SIRS and link it to pathways implicated in sepsis-associated SIRS (see page 104).

Your institute does not have access to this article

Relevant articles

Open Access articles citing this article.

Access options

Buy article

Get time limited or full article access on ReadCube.

$32.00

Buy

All prices are NET prices.

Figure 1: PAMPs, DAMPs and the inflammatory response.

References

  1. Mathers, C. D. & Loncar, D. PLoS Med. 3, e442 (2006).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Zhang, Q. et al. Nature 464, 104–107 (2010).

    ADS  CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Moore, F. A. et al. J. Trauma 40, 501–512 (1996).

    CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Iwasaki, A. & Medzhitov, R. Science 327, 291–295 (2010).

    ADS  CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Mollen, K. P. et al. Shock 26, 430–437 (2006).

    CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Cohen, M. J. et al. Crit. Care 13, R174 (2009).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Gray, M. W., Burger, G. & Lang, B. F. Genome Biol. 2, reviews1018.1–1018.5 (2001).

  8. Ware, L. B. & Matthay, M. A. N. Engl. J. Med. 342, 1334–1349 (2000).

    CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Looney, M. R. et al. J. Clin. Invest. 119, 3450–3461 (2009).

    PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Carolyn S. Calfee and Michael A. Matthay are in the Departments of Medicine and of Anesthesia, and at the Cardiovascular Research Institute, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, California 94143-0111, USA. carolyn.calfee@ucsf.edu,

    Carolyn S. Calfee & Michael A. Matthay

  2. michael.matthay@ucsf.edu,

    Carolyn S. Calfee & Michael A. Matthay

Authors
  1. Carolyn S. Calfee
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Michael A. Matthay
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Calfee, C., Matthay, M. Culprits with evolutionary ties. Nature 464, 41–42 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/464041a

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/464041a

Further reading

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing