The Emerging Spectrum of Early Life Exposure-Related Inflammation and Epigenetic Therapy.
Early life exposure to a variety of insults during sensitive windows of development can reprogram normal physiological responses and alter disease susceptibility later in life. During this process, inflammation triggered by a variety of adverse exposures plays an important role in the initiation and development of many types of diseases including tumorigenesis.
This systematic review article summaries the current knowledge about the role and mechanism of inflammation in development of diseases. In addition, epigenome alteration related to inflammation and treatment options using epigenetic modifiers are highlighted and discussed.
Inflammation is part of the biological response of body tissues and defense mechanism to harmful
stimuli. The immune system recognizes damaged cells, irritants, and pathogens, and the body is
attempted to remove harmful stimuli and begin the healing process.
During the development, the environmental disruptors create prolonged inflammation status, and increase the risk of genomic instability and the introduction of novel mutations. Several signaling pathways involved in the regulation of inflammatory response have been described under the control of epigenetics. Therefore, inflammation is well recognized as a hallmark feature linked to the development of many diseases including varied types of tumors.2-10 Inflammatory cells and cytokines in the local tissue microenvironment promote a pro-inflammatory milieu, which can act in an autocrine and/or paracrine manner on the infiltrating immune cells and modified malignant cells.
Thus the composition of the inflammatory microenvironment has a pivotal influence on risk of disease development and progression. In the case of tumors, inflammation switches to immunosuppression due to tumor evasion from anti-tumor immune response.
Cancer Stud Mol Med Open J. 2018; 4(1): 13-23. doi: 10.17140/CSMMOJ-4-125
