Go a few nights without enough sleep and you're more likely to get sick, but scientists have no real explanation for how sleep is related to the immune system. Now, researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine are finding that fruit flies can point to the answers.
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A role for a microRNA in the immune system has been shown by study of one of the world's first microRNA knockout mouse, reported Friday 27 April in Science. The microRNA acts as a lynchpin to balance the response of immune defences and the researchers suggest the corresponding human gene will have a similar vital role.
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Victorian scientists have discovered a new virus that has the potential to kill organ transplant recipients. The virus was discovered after three Melbourne patients died within weeks of receiving organs from the same donor.
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The immune system is designed to attack anything that is not the body's own tissues, such as pathogens and genetically nonidentical organ transplants, so why does the maternal immune system not attack a developing fetus? Several answers to this question are provided by a new study of mice from researchers at New York University School of Medicine.
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Dual key activation, in which two people must act in concert to launch a weapon, is often installed to safeguard highly destructive arms. New research at the Weizmann Institute of Science shows that cells may employ this strategy as well before launching certain potent weapons of the immune system.
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Researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University's Massey Cancer Center studying the interaction between the immune system and cancer cells have identified interferon gamma as one of the signaling proteins involved with tumor relapse.
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Two researchers from the University Hospital and the Center for Applied Medical Research (CIMA) from the University of Navarra have published an article in Nature Cancer Reviews, one of the leading scientific journals in the area of cancer studies. The article, written by Ignacio Melero and Sandra Hervas-Stubbs, together with other scientists from the United States and Great Britain, addresses the use of a new pharmaceutical family with practical applications in cancer and chronic viral illnesses.
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Our immune system finds it difficult to eliminate tumours effectively. Deciphering the strategies it implements may increase the immune system's effect on tumour cells and thus improve the clinical perspectives for anticancer immune therapy. At the Institut Curie, INSERM and CNRS researchers have used two-photon microscopy to demonstrate, for the first time in vivo and real-time, how T lymphocytes infiltrate a solid tumour in order to fight it.
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Smoking appears to increase the risk of becoming infected with tuberculosis and the risk for the development of active disease upon infection, according to an analysis of previously published research in the February 26 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
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Plants have an immune system that resists infection, yet 10% of the world's agricultural production is lost annually to diseases caused by bacteria, fungi, and viruses. Understanding how disease resistance works may help combat this scourge.
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The search for a vaccine against group B streptococci Group B streptococci are one of the leading causes of infection in newborn infants, causing pneumonia, septicaemia or meningitis.
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Doctors have long wondered why, in some people, the immune system turns against parts of the body it is designed to protect, leading to autoimmune disease. Now, researchers at the National Institutes of Health's (NIH) National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS), in collaboration with the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation, have provided some new clues into one likely factor: the early development of immune system cells called B cells.
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