The ability of organs to integrate a stressful stimulus into a protective response, upon subsequent more profound stress, is an essential and adaptive feature of evolution. Commonly referred to in the basic science literature as 'ischaemic pre-conditioning', this protective effect of a minor insult upon the subsequent injury from a more severe event involves endogenous mechanisms in cells and tissue which ultimately increase cell survival. These processes are not, in fact, limited to ischaemic injuries. Rather, low-level exposure to stresses as varied as amyloid beta peptide, oxidized lipids and other stressors are all capable of inducing protection against subsequent injury. The multimodal nature of pre-conditioning speaks to two important considerations. First, these protective pathways are probably highly evolutionarily conserved; secondly, harnessing endogenous protective pathways could potentially allow us to develop therapies which would probably be well tolerated and capable of reducing multipletypes of injuries.
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