The word “efferocytosis” isn’t one that is frequently thrown about these days. Most heart disease patients would not have heard of this word before, because rarely is it (if ever) discussed by their doctors.
Oddly, though, it is a biological process that occurs naturally within our bodies. Much like autophagy, which more people would have heard of:
Autophagy - How Our Body Performs a Self-Renewing Process
Our bodies consist of approximately 38 trillion cells. These cells are present in just about every part of our body as parts of various different systems and carry out various different functions to support the health of the human body as a whole.
Before dead cells are destroyed, they have to be programmed to commit suicide first. There’s a marked difference when we have dead skin that sloughs off as compared to flaps of dead skin that we have to cut off when we suffer an injury. Somehow, those flaps of skin still can cause pain, while skin that sloughs off is painless.
Because programmed suicide is easier to deal with than a sudden, accidental death.
It happens in real life too - it’s more about how much control one has over their own fates.
In the realm of programmed suicides, a cell that is programmed to commit suicide undergoes apoptosis.
It is stated in this article that “the human body turns over more than one million cells per second through a process known as programmed cell death (PrCD), or apoptosis”.
That article goes on further to state that “the body engages in an evolutionarily conserved process known as programmed cell removal (PrCR), or efferocytosis” to remove those dead cells.
And we can see this process occurring in atherosclerotic plaques, too.
Now, Seriously, What's So Tricky About Cholesterol?
This article is the final part of a 3 part miniseries. The first 2 parts can be found at:
