An expert has answers for you about why some people are more susceptible to infections. Heidi Zapata, assistant professor of medicine (infectious diseases) at Yale School of Medicine, is fascinated by microbes—bacteria, viruses, fungi, and parasites too small to be seen with the naked eye. “That’s what led me to infectious diseases,” she says. Zapata’s...
Tag: <span>immune response</span>
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Unexpected immune response may hold key to long-term cancer remission
September 26, 2024 by Celia Luterbacher, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne From left to right: Co-authors Weilin Li, Tom Enbar, Li Tang, and Lucia Bonati. Credit: Alain HerzogResults from a preclinical study in mice led by EPFL, and a collaborative clinical study in patients show that the type 2 immune response—associated with parasitic infection and...
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An integral T cell pathway has implications for understanding sex-based immune response
T cells from a healthy human female donor were stimulated with antibodies anti-CD3 and anti-CD28 for 48 hours. On the left are cells treated with a control and on the right are cells treated with a chemical inhibitor of NF-κB. The pink stain shows Xist RNA, a long noncoding RNA molecule that initiates and maintains...
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What Does Inflammation Do to the Body?
By Marzia KhanReviewed by Danielle Ellis, B.Sc. What is inflammation?Inflammation is an immune response from the body’s immune system when there is a perceived injury or infection. When injured, inflammation causes the area to become red and swell due to a large number of white blood cells flowing into the area to fight against infection...
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Multiple sclerosis progression linked to immune response outside the brain
JULY 23, 2024 by University of Southampton Credit: Brain Communications (2024). DOI: 10.1093/braincomms/fcae143New research, led by the University of Southampton and University Hospital Southampton, shows that inflammation outside the brain, such as that caused by common infections such as colds and urine infections, is linked to the progression of multiple sclerosis (MS). The Systemic Inflammation...
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Immune Response May Cause Virus-Induced Neurologic Damage
Gwendolyn Rak Neurologic damage following acute viral infections may be attributed to an excessive immune response to the infection, according to a new study.Many viral infections that don’t directly infect the central nervous system (CNS) have been associated with severe neurologic disease. For these viruses, including newer viruses such as SARS-CoV-2 and Zika, the mechanism...
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Immune response, not acute viral infections, responsible for neurological damage, researchers discover
by McMaster University Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public DomainFor years, there has been a long-held belief that acute viral infections like Zika or COVID-19 are directly responsible for neurological damage, but researchers from McMaster University have now discovered that it’s the immune system’s response that is behind it. The research, published on Feb. 5, 2024, in Nature Communications,...
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New ‘dictionary’ of immune responses reveals far more complexity in the immune system than previously thought
by Allessandra DiCorato, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard Cytokine production map by cell type. Credit: Nature (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-06816-9 The immune system can carry out many biological processes, from killing viruses to fighting cancer, thanks in large part to approximately 100 key cell-signaling proteins called cytokines, which instruct immune cells what to do. Cytokines are...
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Immune health—an immunologist explains why both too strong and too weak an immune response can lead to illness
by Aimee Pugh Bernard, The Conversation Too much or too little immune activation can lead to illness. Credit: Kevbonham/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA For immune health, some influencers seem to think the Goldilocks philosophy of “just right” is overrated. Why settle for less immunity when you can have more? Many social media posts push supplements and...
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Unveiling a novel immune response in the intestinal epithelium
by Charles University Immune response to SFB bacteria in the intestines. Credit: Katarína Kováčová Researchers from the Jan Dobeš laboratory at Charles University in Prague have made a significant discovery uncovering a novel immune response in the intestinal epithelium. Furthermore, their study delineates a mechanism that controls this immune response. Their findings were recently published in...
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