Targeting Dysregulated Inflammation to Treat Cardiovascular Diseases

Inflammation is a fundamental process as a natural body defense mechanism, although its dysregulation could lead to chronic pathologic states contributing to cardiovascular diseases. Low-grade chronic inflammation is associated with atherosclerosis and metabolic disorders, such as obesity and insulin resistance. Although in most cases inflammation itself is not the primary cause, it is involved in the pathophysiology of cardiac and vascular-related disorders. Of note, the high production of reactive oxygen species leading to oxidative stress is correlated with the inflammatory pathway driven primarily by the central regulator, the transcription factor NF-кB, which promotes the expression of cytokines. To date, a lot of research has focused on chronic inflammation, which has a crucial role and represents a key target to treat or prevent cardiovascular diseases through anti-inflammatory treatment. Notwithstanding, more efforts are needed to reach a better understanding of the regulation of key players of inflammation signaling.

Strategies aimed at regulating inflammation have been developed to deal with several pathologies. Due to the physiological roles of inflammation, the therapeutic approach of regulating inflammation rather than just inhibiting it should be a common goal. Therefore, recent and new evidence should be able to support immune regulation and elucidate novel targets that could be the foundation to establish new therapeutic options.
With the aim to improve the effectiveness of the therapeutic strategies to treat cardiovascular diseases, there is still the need to understand the whole picture of the encompassed mechanisms in the dysregulated inflammation, involving transcription factors, post-translational modifications, signaling pathways, epigenetics, redox homeostasis, etc. This Research Topic therefore aims to collect new advances in this field to help integrate all this knowledge and establish novel therapeutic options.

This Research Topic welcomes submission addressing new advances in the field of dysregulated inflammation and cardiovascular diseases, with a particular focus on studies:

• providing an overview of inflammation signaling and its implications in the pathophysiology of cardiac and vascular diseases;
• characterizing the effects of chronic inflammation and redox stress in cardiac and vascular diseases;
• defining natural or pharmacological compounds able to regulate the inflammatory response;
• seeking the epigenetics implications in the regulation of inflammation signaling;
• finding out novel targets involved in the regulation of inflammation;
• establishing implications of chronic inflammation and pathological remodeling.


LL is coinventor on the International Patent (WO/2020/226993) relating to the use of antibodies which specifically bind IL-1α to reduce various sequelae of ischemia-reperfusion injury to the central nervous system.