Make text bigger  Make text smaller  Toggle background color  Bookmark/Share

Possibility of temporarily reversing aging in the immune system

Weakened immunity is a serious issue for older people. Because our immune systems become less effective as we age we suffer from more infections and these are often more severe. This takes a serious toll on health and quality of life. Professor Arne Akbar of UCL (University College London), who led this research, explains “Our immune systems get progressively weaker as we age because each time we recover from an infection a proportion of o Read more...

Posted
August 16th, 2011

Tagged


No Comments

Prenatal exposure to stress linked to accelerated cell aging

The researchers discovered that this prenatal exposure to stress affected the development of chromosome regions that control cell aging processes. The study results, which appear online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, point to the importance of maternal health and well-being during pregnancy. “Our previous research on prenatal stress exposure has shown its effects on long-term metabolic, immune, endocrine Read more...

Posted
August 2nd, 2011

Tagged


No Comments

Antibodies help protect monkeys from HIV-like virus, scientists show

The finding marks an important step toward understanding how an effective HIV vaccine could work, according to scientists who led the study at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health. Scientists administered the SIV vaccine to half of the 129 monkeys in this study and a placebo vaccine to the other half. The scientists then gave each monkey up to 12 doses of one of two forms of Read more...

Posted
May 8th, 2011

Tagged


No Comments

How do white blood cells detect invaders to destroy?

Nature Sinai Medical Center have discovered how a molecular receptor on the surface of white blood cells identifies when invading fungi have established direct contact with the cell surface and pose an infectious threat. The receptor called Dectin-1, studied in the laboratory of David Underhill, PhD, an associate professor in Cedars-Sinai’s Inflammatory Bowel and Immunobiology Research Institute, detects fungi and instructs white blood cell Read more...

Posted
April 30th, 2011

Tagged


No Comments

Cause and new treatment for common recurrent fever in children identified

The proposed treatment, which will be validated in a larger study before it is recommended in treating PFAPA syndrome, wards off an inappropriate immune system attack without increasing the frequency of flare-ups, a problem caused by the current standard treatment with corticosteroids. The team of researchers from the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) and the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (N Read more...

Posted
April 10th, 2011

Tagged


No Comments

There’s a new ‘officer’ in the infection control army

Nature Johns Hopkins scientists have identified a previously unrecognized step in the activation of infection-fighting white blood cells, the main immunity troops in the body’s war on bacteria, viruses and foreign proteins. “It’s as if we knew many of the generals, colonels and majors and now we have discovered a new officer that helps the troops carry out the right battle plan,” says Joel Pomerantz, Ph.D., an assistant pr Read more...

Posted
December 11th, 2010

Tagged


No Comments

Protein-printing technique gives snapshots of immune system defense

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (November 3, 2008) — When Albrecht Durer and other Renaissance artists painstakingly etched images onto plates, swabbed ink into the fine grooves and transferred the images to paper with a press, they never could have guessed that centuries later the same technique would uncover the secrets of human cells. Whitehead Institute and Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers have borrowed a technique from such “i Read more...

Posted
October 21st, 2010

Tagged


No Comments

Scientists pinpoint immune-system targets in complex pathogens

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (Dec. 5, 2008) — Our immune cells have an amazingly intricate recognition system to detect invading pathogens. Often, the intricacies have overwhelmed scientists who want to know exactly what gives an alarm signal to T cells, a class of white blood cells that recognizes invaders. “For some pathogens like the flu, the components that trigger a host immune response have been known for quite some time,” says Whiteh Read more...

Posted
October 15th, 2010

Tagged


No Comments

Blood stem cell, leukemia link illuminated in new study

The study, reported in Cell Stem Cell on Aug. 6, 2010 and reviewed in Cell Stem Cell and Cell, opens a new frontier for studying the molecular underpinnings of adult leukemia. The discovery also suggests a possible therapeutic strategy, the scientists say, for reducing the risk of leukemia that results from chemotherapy used to treat solid tumors. Finally, it may explain why other types of adult stem cells are susceptible to accumulating potenti Read more...

Posted
August 20th, 2010

Tagged





No Comments

Familial link found in rare childhood leukemia

Findings are reported in the August 8, 2010, Advance Online Publication of the journal Nature Genetics. “JMML, like many other pediatric cancers, is essentially development gone awry. By better understanding the developmental biology of cancers in children, we hope to improve our ability to treat them,” said Mignon Loh, MD, senior author of the study and a pediatric cancer specialist at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital. JMML is Read more...

Posted
August 11th, 2010

Tagged





No Comments

Meta

Categories