Acute and Chronic Inflammation

Inflammation is defined as the body’s local vascular and cellular response to injury found within a body that was caused by factors that invade and injury from the outside or within the body. Acute inflammation occurs from a few hours to a few days, with five clinical signs and symptoms: warmth, redness due to hyperemia and dilation, pain, localized swelling, and a loss of function to the injured site. Acute inflammation can occur from rapid onsets of a cold, acute bronchitis, and infected ingrown toenail, or more. Chronic inflammation, however, occurs when the inciting stimuli for inflammation can not be taken out from the body, where the immune response becomes activated and can contribute to the inflammation. The inflammation can last months or longer, and it is most associated with chronic organ system diseases. It can also be seen in asthma, tuberculosis, rheumatoid arthritis, and chronic sinusitis (Battle, 2009). As one can see, chronic inflammation results in severe repercussions to the body.

           Given this, there is a public health importance to chronic inflammatory diseases, which look at disease burden, the impact on health care, and how disability services play a role. In order for all of these ideas to be analyzed fully, well-defined, relevant animal models will need to be studied to look at the role of infectious agents in chronic inflammatory diseases (Cassell, 2010). This needs to occur quickly, because chronic diseases that have inflammation are the leading cause of death in American, which account for nearly 60% of all deaths. It is easy to see that there has been a rising incidence of allergic and autoimmune diseases that have caused a burden on individuals, populations and economies. In America the major chronic diseases are diabetes, vascular disease, respiratory disease, and cancers. America also faces burden with Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease, along with osteoarthritis. Of this, over 80% of those whom die due to chronic inflammation have a low to middle-income (Honeyman and Harrison, 2011), which is a major impact on health care. Therefore, the burden of chronic inflammatory diseases is placed on the poor.

           Many people who have chronic inflammation have disability services with decreased physical health statuses. One category is chronic kidney disease. Over the past five years the number of cases per 100,000 has increased in a majority of the states. For instance, from 2010 to 2014 the number of cases, on average grew 10 people per 100,000 within those four years (Chronic Disease Indicator, 2014). Another example is arthritis, which is the leading cause of disability with chronic disease inflammation. Over 23% of Americans suffer with arthritis, which costs at least 81 billion dollars each year in health care. This leads to a public health problem of limiting work; 8 million working-age adults report that their ability to work is limited due to having arthritis. It is predicted that by 2040 over 78 million people will have arthritis. Many who are of working age and have arthritis receive disability services, which hurts the workforce (Arthritis, 2017).

           Chronic inflammation is a major public health issue that the country is trying to address. Inflammation is a serious problem that many Americans face throughout their life, and if it occurs for months at a time serious medical conditions can arise. Because of this, the government needs to promote prevention programs and interventions to help those stop from having chronic inflammation. If this is not done then the burden and the impact of health care and disability services will only get worse.

References

Arthritis. (2017, March 06). Retrieved March 16, 2017, from https://www.cdc.gov/chronicdisease/resources/publications/aag/arthritis.htm

Battle, C. U. (2009). Essentials of public health biology: a guide for the study of pathophysiology. Sudbury, MA: Jones and Bartlett.

Cassell, G. (2010, December 14). Infectious Causes of Chronic Inflammatory Diseases and Cancer. Retrieved March 16, 2017, from https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/4/3/98-0339_article

Chronic Disease Indicator. (2014). Retrieved March 16, 2017, from https://nccd.cdc.gov/cdi/rdPage.aspx?rdReport=DPH_CDI.ExploreByTopic&islTopic=CKD&islYear=9999&go=GO

Honeyman, M., & Harrison, L. (2011). Chronic Disease and Public Health. Health, 23-44. Retrieved March 16, 2017.

Westblad, M. E., Forsberg, A., & Press, R. (2009). Disability and health status in patients with chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy. Disability and Rehabilitation, 31(9), 720-725. doi:10.1080/09638280802306497