Post-traumatic inflammatory response: perhaps a succession of phases with a nutritional purpose

Abstract

Post-traumatic inflammatory response, whether this be local or systemic, is considered to be the succession of three functional phases called nervous, immune and endocrine, that could have a nutritional significance. In the nervous phase, ischemia-reperfusion, which causes interstitial and cellular edema, is produced. Both types of edema could represent an ancestral mechanism to feed the cells by diffusion. During the immune phase, the tissues are infiltrated by inflammatory cells and bacteria. Then, extracellular digestion, by enzyme release (fermentation), and intracellular digestion by phagocytosis could be associated with a hypothetical trophic capacity for the neighbouring cells. Finally, in the late or endocrine phase nutrition mediated by the blood capillaries is established. In these three successive phases the inflammatory response goes on from an anaerobic metabolism (ischemia) through a metabolism characterized by a defective oxygen use (reperfusion, oxidative burst and heat hyperproduction) to an oxidative metabolism (oxidative phosphorilation) with a correct use of oxygen to produce usable energy. This type of metabolism is characterized by a large production of ATP, which is used to drive specialized multiple cellular processes. Since the nervous, immune and endocrine phases of the inflammatory response go from ischemia to the development of an oxidative metabolism, It is also tempting to speculate on whether the body reproduces the successive stages by which life passes from its origin without oxygen until it develops an effective, although costly, system for the use of oxygen every time we suffer post-traumatic acute inflammation.