Why is inflammation tightly regulated?

Inflammation is very tightly controlled by the body so that it doesn't become a pathologic condition itself. Uncontrolled inflammation is actually the hypothesized cause of the severe mortality rate of the Spanish influenza outbreak of 1918-1919. A large proportion of healthy young adults became ill with the Spanish flu and died rapidly from the build-up of blood and fluid in their lungs. Scientists have now reconstructed the 1918-1919 influenza virus and it causes a cytokine storm in the body, which results in rapid and uncontrolled propagation of the inflammatory response. The cytokine storm, rather than the virus, resulted in the deaths of the ferrets they were experimenting on.