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Acute inflammation: What causes "loss of function"?

One of the cardinal signs of acute inflammation is loss of function, but I can't seem to find the mechanism behind it. Help?
Thanks :smile:

Reply 1

Beska

Original post by Kurraiyo

One of the cardinal signs of acute inflammation is loss of function, but I can't seem to find the mechanism behind it. Help?
Thanks :smile:

In the context of acute inflammation (calor, rubor, etc.) loss of function describes basically that when something hurts, you can't use it as much. Typically, for example, if you have inflammation in the small joints of the hand it's difficult or painful to use the hand (because of the oedema, pain) so there's loss of function. It's more of a functional thing as a consequence of the other aspects of inflammation.

In terms of other bodily organs inflammation will also cause loss of cellular function. Things will become congested with neutrophils, cells generally won't work properly, there may be some cell death, etc. which leads to some degree of loss of function. An example here would be something like acute liver failure where hepatocyte death means there's less hepatocytes to do the liver's job, so there's a loss of functon.. LFTs goes off, etc.