Pathophysiology is a discipline of biology which designates the study of disorders in the functioning of the organism, when it is affected by a disease.

If physiology deals with the normal functioning of organs and tissues of the body, physiopathology, or pathological physiology, deals with the disruption of these systems. This discipline is interested in both the body’s reactions to disease and the physical, cellular or biochemical mechanisms that lead to the development of a pathology. It is therefore useful both for understanding the symptomatology (clinical signs) and the etiology (causes) of diseases. 

No, there is no physician specializing in pathophysiology. All have studied this subject as part of their studies, sometimes with a more marked emphasis on one or another of the organic systems (digestive, respiratory, urinary, circulatory, cutaneous, etc.) depending on the specialty. they chose. It is this good knowledge of the dysfunctions of the body and its organs that allows them to make diagnoses and offer the most appropriate treatments to their patients.

Outside of medical schools, physiopathology is mainly found in research laboratories. Patients are rarely brought to meet the teams studying their disease, unless they have been enrolled in a cohort of patients to study this pathology, or in a clinical trial.

Physiopathology research provides a better understanding of all the mechanisms involved in the organism’s disturbances, from the cause of a disease (defective gene, infection, exposure to a risk factor, etc.) to its clinical manifestations ( cough, fever, rash, pain, etc.). This aims to identify possible levers of action, therefore to develop treatments which, by acting on these levers, could restore the normal functions of the organ or tissue affected. 

There are still many diseases whose causes and mechanisms are not well understood. Their pathophysiological study should make it possible to develop treatments which will no longer be only symptomatic, but aetiological, that is to say which will treat the disease definitively at the root. This type of research would, for example, make it possible to better understand how stress becomes pathogenic in certain individuals but not others, and why it does not always affect the same tissues, by highlighting the regulatory mechanisms that do not work properly and the impact that this can have on the different organs.

Likewise, pathophysiology can help to understand when and how a disease worsens or becomes complicated, what are the links between certain treatments and their side effects, or how different pathologies interfere with each other. Cardiovascular disease, diabetes, hypertension and obesity, for example, cannot be understood and treated properly without taking into account the many interactions between them.

Advances in the knowledge of risk factors and mechanisms that lead to the development of cancer or diabetes allow, moreover, the development of more individualized medicine, with increasingly personalized treatments for each patient. 

The teams in physiopathology laboratories are often multidisciplinary, made up of:

• doctors ;
• but also biologists;
• of biochemists;
• biophysicists;
• d’immunologistes ;
• or even pathologists and medical imaging specialists, etc. 

All of them put their skills and expertise at the service of improving knowledge about a given pathology or family of pathologies.

If you have been enrolled in a clinical trial or in any other research as a subject of study, this work is framed by a very strict regulatory system, aimed at protecting the participants and guaranteeing their rights. Within the framework of this research, the acts performed (examinations and samples, treatments, etc.) are defined in a research protocol which must be respected by the investigating physicians (who direct and supervise the conduct of the research).

Thus, research on people can only be carried out on humans if certain conditions are met:

• research must be based on the latest state of scientific knowledge and sufficient preclinical experimentation;
• the foreseeable risk incurred by the people who take part in the research must not be out of proportion with the expected benefit for these people or the interest of this research;
• research should aim to extend scientific knowledge of human beings and the means likely to improve their condition;
• the research must have been designed in such a way that the pain, inconvenience, fear and any other foreseeable inconvenience associated with the research are minimized.

On its website, the National Institute for Health and Medical Research (Inserm) recalls that the interests of people who are involved in research always take precedence over the sole interests of science and society.