The Inflammation Network

Globally, 3 out of 5 persons lose their lives to chronic inflammatory conditions, such as diabetes, cardiovascular disorders, cancer, chronic respiratory diseases, skin diseases, renal diseases and obesity. Inflammatory diseases are the most prevailing cause of death worldwide and the numbers keep rising.

The network focuses on reducing the burden of infectious and inflammatory diseases caused by pathogens, damaged cells, toxic compounds or radiation in order to develop new diagnostic and treatment technologies.

As a society, we need more knowledge about the correlation between e.g. inflammation and development of cancer, about biomarkers and about molecular mechanisms of autoimmunity in e.g. rheumatological conditions - not to mention chronic mucosal inflammation. In the inflammation network we collaborate interdisciplinearily in order to find answers.

We comprise a wide range of researchers with interest in diagnostic methods, epidemiological data, inflammatory markers and intracellular pathways, understanding of cell population and tissue structures, among others.

Subject-specific programmes for PhD students

The subject-specific PhD programme in inflammation at Aarhus University, Health, offers an in-depth, multidisciplinary study of inflammation's role in diseases and prevention, addressing its significant role in both non-communicable diseases (NCD) and infections.

For more information about the subject-specific programmes: Subject-specific programmes, Graduate School of Health (au.dk).

Paper of the month

Professor Søren R. Paludan, Department of Biomedicine

Human TMEFF1 is a restriction factor for herpes simplex virus in the brain and TMEFF1 is a neuron-specific restriction factor for herpes simplex virus

Why is this paper important?
Infections can cause devastating acute and chronic diseases. The immune system serves the purpose to fight infections, but can also amplify disease, if hyper-activated or if activated for too long time. For instance, the brain is an organ with is very sensitive to inflammation, yet all known immune mechanisms working in the brain are associated with inflammation. Herpes simplex virus type 1 is a neurotropic virus, and the most common cause of viral encephalitis. Although more than 60% of the adult population have HSV-1 in their peripherial neurons, only about 1:250.000 develop encephalitis. Therefore, we were triggered by two very fundamental questions, namely, 1) what prevents HSV-1 in the peripherial nerves from entering into the CNS, and 2) does the brain possess defense mechanisms that do not involve activation of inflammation. We do indeed identify a novel mechanisms, involving a protein TMEFF1, through which neurons directly prevent HSV-1 from infecting cortical neurons, thus preventing development of severe brain infection. The findings from our work contributes to the answers to the two above questions. But the full answer is far more complex.