Advanced General Medicine Conference

摘要

Fever is one of the oldest and most frequently recorded physical signs in clinical medicine, but its pathophysiological significance remains unclear. However, over the last 40 years, attempts to understand the mechanism of fever contributed key insights that led to the discovery of several families of intercellular protein messengers and growth factors, now called cytokines. Understanding the cytokines that are produced by blood monocytes and tissue macrophages (monokines) has been especially important in inflammatory and immune diseases. There have already been notable therapeutic successes in chronic inflammatory diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease and psoriasis. We can expect further significant therapeutic and diagnostic developments in the future.