Several faculty physicians from the University of Arizona Department of Medicine are among authorities consulted for an “In Health” article in the January 2018 issue of Tucson Lifestyle magazine that focuses on “Chronic Inflammation: The Road to Relief.”
They include:
- UA Department of Medicine Chair Monica Kraft, MD, a pulmonary physician who has worldwide renown as a physician-scientist whose research focuses on severe asthma;
- Kent Kwoh, MD (pictured right), chief of the UA Division of Rheumatology and director of the UA Arthritis Center; and
- UA Division of Integrative Medicine’s Randy Horwitz, MD, and Victoria Maizes, MD, who are medical director and executive director of the UA Center on Integrative Medicine.
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Dr. Horwitz (right), an associate professor of medicine, points out in the article that inflammation is an important part of the body’s innate—or natural—immune system. “Although the inability to mount an inflammatory reaction can be life-threatening, the inability to terminate an inflammatory reaction also can be deleterious.”
Problems with prolonged inflammation, the article notes, can cause the immune system to attack healthy cells leading to or exacerbating situations with multiple conditions of the heart, lung, musculoskeletal system and more.
Dr. Kraft (left) spoke about lung inflammation related to asthma and her research to better understand its causes, which has identified peptides under development as therapies to reduce instances of severe asthma attacks. A professor of medicine, she is also deputy director of the UA Health Sciences Asthma and Airway Disease Research Center and the Robert and Irene Flynn Chair in Medicine at the University of Arizona.
Similarly, Dr. Kwoh’s research looks at inflammation in rheumatoid diseases such as arthritis and osteoarthritis. “Many types of arthritis have systemic inflammation,” said Dr. Kwoh, part of whose focus includes imaging to detect MRI biomarkers for development and progression of knee osteoarthritis. A professor of medicine and imaging, he is also the UA’s Charles A.L. and Suzanne M. Stephens Endowed Chair in Rheumatology.
Dr. Maizes (pictured right), a professor of medicine who is also chief of the UA Division of Integrative Medicine, noted that food choices also contributes to inflammation as well as obesity. “We can control what we put in our mouths,” she said in the article, “(and) make food decisions that greatly impact the milieu of our body, increasing or reducing inflammation.”
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—David Mogollón