Infections and Inflammations

Inflammations are one of the most common clinical phenomena in medicine. They have various causes, i.e. they may or may not be induced by infections. In spite of the development of antibiotics and vaccines in the last century, infections are still responsible for a large number of illnesses and deaths worldwide every year. This applies both to the industrialised and “Western” world with its annually recurring flu epidemics, for instance, and to infectious diseases associated with poverty that may spread globally within a very short time via modern transport routes. Prototypical examples of these are viral infections such as viral haemorrhagic fevers, HIV or malaria. The rapid emergence of resistance to commercially available anti-infective drugs poses another serious threat. Furthermore, immunocompromised patients, especially transplant or oncology patients, are particularly prone to infections. Non-infectious inflammations are often due to allergies or autoimmune diseases that may manifest themselves on a wide variety of organs, but most commonly on the skin and mucous membranes. Of particular concern in this context are the chronic inflammatory diseases in the lung and respiratory tract, asthma and COPD, both of which are extremely common in the Western and industrialised world. The scientists of this Campus Profile Area are using new, integrative and interdisciplinary approaches of translational basic research, epidemiology and clinical research to not only develop a better understanding of disease in these areas, but in particular to advance new diagnostic and therapeutic procedures.