Inflammation vs. Infection

Main Difference

The main difference between Inflammation and Infection is that the Inflammation is a signs of activation of the immune system and Infection is a invasion of a host by disease-causing organisms.

• Inflammation

  Inflammation (from Latin: inflammatio) is part of the complex biological response of body tissues to harmful stimuli, such as pathogens, damaged cells, or irritants, and is a protective response involving immune cells, blood vessels, and molecular mediators. The function of inflammation is to eliminate the initial cause of cell injury, clear out necrotic cells and tissues damaged from the original insult and the inflammatory process, and initiate tissue repair.

  The five classical signs of inflammation are heat, pain, redness, swelling, and loss of function (Latin calor, dolor, rubor, tumor, and functio laesa).[1] Inflammation is a generic response, and therefore it is considered as a mechanism of innate immunity, as compared to adaptive immunity, which is specific for each pathogen. Too little inflammation could lead to progressive tissue destruction by the harmful stimulus (e.g. bacteria) and compromise the survival of the organism. In contrast, chronic inflammation is associated with various diseases, such as hay fever, periodontal disease, atherosclerosis, and osteoarthritis.

  Inflammation can be classified as either acute or chronic. Acute inflammation is the initial response of the body to harmful stimuli and is achieved by the increased movement of plasma and leukocytes (especially granulocytes) from the blood into the injured tissues. A series of biochemical events propagates and matures the inflammatory response, involving the local vascular system, the immune system, and various cells within the injured tissue. Prolonged inflammation, known as chronic inflammation, leads to a progressive shift in the type of cells present at the site of inflammation, such as mononuclear cells, and is characterized by simultaneous destruction and healing of the tissue from the inflammatory process.

  Inflammation is not a synonym for infection. Infection describes the interaction between the action of microbial invasion and the reaction of the body’s inflammatory response—the two components are considered together when discussing an infection, and the word is used to imply a microbial invasive cause for the observed inflammatory reaction. Inflammation on the other hand describes purely the body’s immunovascular response, whatever the cause may be. But because of how often the two are correlated, words ending in the suffix -itis (which refers to inflammation) are sometimes informally described as referring to infection. For example, the word urethritis strictly means only “urethral inflammation”, but clinical health care providers usually discuss urethritis as a urethral infection because urethral microbial invasion is the most common cause of urethritis.

  It is useful to differentiate inflammation and infection because there are typical situations in pathology and medical diagnosis where inflammation is not driven by microbial invasion – for example, atherosclerosis, trauma, ischemia, and autoimmune diseases including type III hypersensitivity. Conversely, there is pathology where microbial invasion does not cause the classic inflammatory response – for example, parasitosis or eosinophilia.

• Infection

  Infection is the invasion of an organism’s body tissues by disease-causing agents, their multiplication, and the reaction of host tissues to the infectious agents and the toxins they produce. Infectious disease, also known as transmissible disease or communicable disease, is illness resulting from an infection.

  Infections are caused by infectious agents (pathogens) including:

  Viruses and related agents such as viroids and prions

  Bacteria

  Fungi, further subclassified into:

  Ascomycota, including yeasts such as Candida, filamentous fungi such as Aspergillus, Pneumocystis species, and dermatophytes, a group of organisms causing infection of skin and other superficial structures in humans.

  Basidiomycota, including the human-pathogenic genus Cryptococcus

  Parasites, which are usually divided into

  unicelllular organisms (e.g. malaria, Toxoplasma, Babesia)

  macroparasites (worms or helminths) including nematodes such as parasitic roundworms and pinworms, tapeworms (cestodes), and flukes (trematodes, such as schistosomiasis)

  Arthropods such as ticks, mites, fleas, and lice, can also cause human disease, which conceptually are similar to infections, but invasion of a human or animal body by these macroparasites is usually termed infestation. ( Diseases caused by helminths, which are also macroparasites, are sometimes termed infestations as well, but are sometimes called infections.)Hosts can fight infections using their immune system. Mammalian hosts react to infections with an innate response, often involving inflammation, followed by an adaptive response.Specific medications used to treat infections include antibiotics, antivirals, antifungals, antiprotozoals, and antihelminthics. Infectious diseases resulted in 9.2 million deaths in 2013 (about 17% of all deaths). The branch of medicine that focuses on infections is referred to as infectious disease.