classical vs alternative macrophage activation

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Enkidu

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When looking at inflammatory lesions, is there any relevance to the type of macrophage activation present, or the types of T-cells that are infiltrating? It seems like this information should be relevant in differentiating between different inflammatory conditions, but I haven't heard anything about it. Does the type of macrophage activation only matter in research?

It seems like inflammatory pathology has a lot of clinical correlation in it, but it seems like there should be some more specific immunophenotypic way to distinguish granulomas in sarcoid from granulomas in crohn's - (or whatever the inflammatory condition is, those may be bad examples).
 
When looking at inflammatory lesions, is there any relevance to the type of macrophage activation present, or the types of T-cells that are infiltrating? It seems like this information should be relevant in differentiating between different inflammatory conditions, but I haven't heard anything about it. Does the type of macrophage activation only matter in research?

It seems like inflammatory pathology has a lot of clinical correlation in it, but it seems like there should be some more specific immunophenotypic way to distinguish granulomas in sarcoid from granulomas in crohn's - (or whatever the inflammatory condition is, those may be bad examples).

In day-to-day hospital practice it does not mean s***.
 
. . . at the moment, anyway. But these are interesting questions that are being investigated, and it may turn out that more specific immunophenotyping of infiltrates will yield diagnostic or prognostic information.
 
The types of T-cells present matter quite a bit, particularly in skin biopsies, and their components and ratios matter. Now, that stuff is tied to macrophage activation, but knowing things at that level isn't necessary for current clinical practice.
 
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