by University of Michigan Credit: CC0 Public Domain Naturopathic medicine, or herbal medicine, is all the rage, especially among young people. But how much of this is supported by science? Ginger is known to have anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidative effects, making it a popular herbal supplement to treat inflammatory diseases. And according to a Michigan Medicine led study...
by University of Virginia A drug that has shown promise for treating multiple sclerosis may actually make the debilitating disease worse, new research from the University of Virginia School of Medicine suggests. The drug has not yet made it to human trials for MS, but the UVA scientists are warning their fellow researchers to proceed extremely cautiously. In addition to worsening the disease in...
Between taking care of yourself and family members and trying to manage a social life and career, it’s common for women to feel tired and achy. But are these symptoms of a stressful life, or could they be tied to an underlying condition like autoimmune disease? Ana-Maria Orbai, M.D., M.H.S., is a rheumatologist at the Johns...
by Frederike Buhse, Kiel University The SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, which causes the coronavirus disease COVID-19, can penetrate many different body cells. This has been shown in multiple research papers published in recent weeks. Thus, not only can the function of the respiratory tract and the lungs be severely disrupted, but also numerous other organs. The SARS-CoV-2...
by Sarah Lichtman, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center A study published today in the journal Nature could help explain why certain people who develop amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a deadly neurological disorder also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, are prone to autoimmune diseases. ALS, which has no known cure, causes progressive degeneration of nerve cells in the...
by Sheila Evans, University of Chicago Medical Center Many heritable immune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and blood-cell related traits derive from critical proteins not being made or not functioning correctly. But exactly how a person’s genes, the regulation of these genes and how the resulting proteins interact to cause disease is not widely understood....
In their search for what triggers the damaging side-effects caused by acute psychological stress, Yale researchers found an answer by doing a fat check. In the face of psychological stress, an immune system response that can significantly worsen inflammatory responses originates in brown fat cells, the Yale team reports June 30 in the journal Cell....
OHSU research targets disease afflicting millions in developing world OREGON HEALTH & SCIENCE UNIVERSITY Scientists at Oregon Health & Science University have teamed up with OHSU spinoff, Najít Technologies, Inc. to develop a new vaccine that appears to confer immunity to a diarrheal disease that afflicts hundreds of millions of people in developing countries around...
During a 1989 lecture at the Cold Spring Harbor Symposium on Quantitative Biology, Yale School of Medicine professor Charles Janeway, MD, hypothesized the existence of an innate immune system and special receptors on immune cells (currently known as toll-like receptors) that trigger the body’s response to infection. Janeway’s research later confirmed his insights, providing the...
Researchers from Prokhorov General Physics Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology have developed a novel method for diagnosing and monitoring autoimmune disorders. Within a mere 25 minutes, their new biosensor not only measures the concentration of autoantibodies in human blood serum with extremely high sensitivity, but...
