An inflammatory response is beneficial to the organism, while an excessive uncontrolled inflammatory response can lead to the nonspecific killing of tissue cells. Therefore, promoting the resolution of inflammation is an important mechanism for protecting an organism suffering from chronic inflammatory diseases. Resolvins are a series of endogenous lipid mediums and have the functions of inhibiting a leukocyte infiltration, increasing macrophagocyte phagocytosis, regulating cytokines, and alleviating inflammatory pain. By promoting the inflammation resolution, resolvins play an irreplaceable role throughout the pathological process of some joint inflammation, neuroinflammation, vascular inflammation, and tissue inflammation. Although a large number of experiments have been conducted to study different subtypes of resolvins in different directions, the differences in the action targets between the different subtypes are rarely compared. Hence, this paper reviews the generation of resolvins, the characteristics of resolvins, and the actions of resolvins under a chronic inflammatory response and clinical translation of resolvins for the treatment of chronic inflammatory diseases.
Keywords: characteristics; chronic inflammation response; clinical translation; mechanism; resolvins.