In our last treatise on the dominance of water in our lives, the responses have been quite amazing and amusing. A lot of people take so many things for granted that they could be embarrassingly surprised when told how much their lives depended on it. Such is the case with water that is everywhere that we all assume it will always be there. As I was about putting this piece together the news broke out; the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris France was on fire.
As a Catholic I felt distracted but not without the nostalgia of Notre Dame College, Ozoro in the then Bendel State. That school was a nightmare to us in Eghosa Grammar School, Benin City any time we had to play against them in a football match, especially during Principal’s Cup competition. And those were the days we had Etoroma aka Zapata who was already a regular in Bendel Insurance FC in our defense! Sorry for the digression.
The good news about the inferno at the Notre Dame is that it was successfully brought under control with water from a nearby river. We are not here to talk about environmental waters but the one inside our body that help us during challenges. And this is the water found in the different compartments of the body. When our body is exposed to injurious substances or infective agents the body’s response is usually through INFLAMMATRORY process. This basically is the process involved in the neutralisation of the offending agent and initiating the repair of the damaged area.
At the onset of inflammation, the area affected would have the following five characteristics; warm, painful, reddish in colour, swollen and loss of function. What has been described classically as calor, dolor, rubor, tumour and function laesa for those who are still in love with Latin.
On the initiation of the assault or infection, there is increased permeability of neighboring blood vessel, especially the arterioles and the capillaries thus allowing plasma to flow into the area thus making it to swell up, warm and painful. This pain is sometimes enhanced by the presence of substances like Bradykinin. The whole essence this phenomenon is to dilute the toxins in the area so affected by the exudate plasma in the blood. This fluid, in turn, helps in reducing the local concentration of the toxin and its toxicity.
It would also serve as a medium for other substances that are involved in this complex body response to injury. Those that are responsible for increased permeability of the blood vessels and those that are directly involved in destroying the foreign bodies. These would include substances like histamine and serotonin for the former and the complement system proteins for the later. All these need a fluid medium to operate and the water in the plasma does exactly that.
Acute inflammation is often described as an immunovascular event, meaning that it is a combination of immunological and vascular response. The immune response in this situation is often referred to as innate, which means that it is inherent or rather born with. It does not need any prior sensitisation of cells or tissue to be activated and run its full course. It is usually of a shot duration but can progress to a chronic. In its classical form the final stage of this phenomenon is when the white blood cells move in to mop up deed cells and offending toxins or infective agents. This phase is often facilitated by a fluid medium and known as the cellular component of inflammation.