What’s past is prologue: epigenetic memory links transient inflammation to future disease

In recent studies published in Science and Nature , Cowley et al. 1 and Nagaraja et al. 2 show that transient inflammatory injury can be converted into durable epigenetic memory through selective chromatin persistence, incomplete erasure after recovery, and lineage propagation with later functional consequences, including tumour-promoting susceptibility. Together, they expose the fiction that recovery restores true biological innocence, shifting the discussion from the vague language of cellular memory to a more exacting mechanistic account of persistence, inheritance, and future disease risk.