Inflammation is important in many diseases like cancer, heart failure and atherosclerosis. Inflammatory responses have many roles, including tissue repair and the elimination of harmful pathogens. This is partly accomplished by limiting the amount of iron required for bacterial growth.
Although inflammation is part of wound healing, even in conditions like heart disease, excess inflammation can lead to changes in the size, shape and function of the heart, and eventually to heart failure. Therefore, clinical management of inflammation by distinguishing between pro- and anti-inflammatory responses is important but remains challenging for many reasons.
To understand when interventions should be introduced to prevent excess inflammation, we propose the use of MRI to noninvasively detect the activity of immune cells (like monocytes, a type of white blood cell) that play a major role in inflammation. In our molecular imaging approach, we track changes in cellular iron metabolism using MRI since changes in iron are regulated by the hormone, hepcidin and reflect stage of inflammation.
