Cytokine Storm

Have you ever wondered how and why your cuts and bruises gets healed?. At times, even when you don't care to put a bandage or apply any antiseptic. And why you feel an itching sensation when the wound is almost healed up? Well, the answer lies inside your body.

Like every country has a system to maintain law and order and stability, our body too has a system very much like it. A system that checks intruders like bacterias and viruses, a system that checks foreign elements like molecules of iron, dirt and so on. And a system that calls in an army of T-cells and other immune cells and macrophages to make sure nothing damages the body. We know this system as Immune system.

Now, since we are simplifying and comparing this complex process of immune system with a law enforcing group, lets see what role does cytokines play in here.

In simplest definition of all, cytokines are signaling molecules for cellular communication made up of proteins. They are like those informants who provide tips and whereabouts information to the police. So whenever you are hurt, cytokines are the first in the immune system to know where you are hurt and they will pass on this information to T-cells and other immune cells, which will surround your injury making sure it does not spread.

However, at times due to various reasons cytokine storm or hypercytokinemia occurs causing a great deal of tissue damage. So what exactly is cytokine storm?

When the immune system is working on the viruses and bacterias in your body, cytokines signal T-cells and other immune cells to travel to the infected area. Apart from this, cytokines also have the ability to self-produce more cytokines, hence activating more T-cells and immune cells. This entire loop of positive feedback is controlled by the body. However, in some cases, this chain reaction gets out of control and more and more cytokines are produce which can damage organs to quite an extent.

It has been speculated that many of the deaths caused by H1N1 swine flu has been due to cytokine storm.