Further notes about the morphostasis concept – split files

(49) What is the "immune system's" response to non-damaging micro-organisms?

I keep reading comments similar to the following statement and wonder how apposite they are: "Inflammation is a key host defense response to infection and injury, the aim of which is host protection against pathogens, regeneration of injured tissues, and re–establishment of tissue homeostasis." What if a potentially infective organism gets into body tissues and causes little or no harm? If it were to cause harm, then the cascade of subsequent events may have far more to do with the harm inflicted than the mere presence of the organism. This is one of those situations where observation is likely to conform to hypothesis. The consequent events will be attributed to "inflammation is a response to "pathogens" where "pathogen" is a loose term for micro–organisms. Should we have said pathogenic micro–organisms we could then have held in view the point that the inflammation cascade is a consequence of damage and its intensity consequent upon the degree of damage. If all cells have some capacity to ingest micro–organisms (a throwback to their primordial amoeboid origin) and resident sentinel phagocytes (eg, dendritic cells) are also ready to eat these micro–organisms, then the capacity for these organisms to proliferate will be limited. The first, obvious, cause of tissue damage – before the micro–organism releases any of its pathogenic armamentaria, if it has any – is its insinuation between host cells and the disruption of their junctions (I would interpret this as "damage"). And that depends upon them finding suitable nutrients. Without pathogenic mechanisms or collateral damage, it is probably going to be very hard to find such nutrients. I think that we can reword the whole scenario like this: "micro–organisms are usually phagocytosed (by amateur or professional phagocytes) once they are encountered and do not, generally, lead to significant tissue damage. Pathogenic organisms need to generate damage whilst opportunistic micro–organisms need to rely upon collateral damage. Neither of them are able to proliferate in the tissues of a host without the presence of significant damage." This tendency to ignore the importance of damage leads to the idea that a function of inflammation is to actively eliiminate "pathogens" (micro–organisms meant here); inflammation suppresses infection – it does not aim to eliminate it. This suppression often leads to the apparent elimination of the micro–organisms but only becaue it gives them a hard time or they are treated as suitable "food" by just about every cell in the body; not just by inflammatory cells.