News by Subject Medicine & Health

In a review published May 17, 2019 in the journal Trends in Immunology, researchers discuss how time of day affects the severity of afflictions ranging from allergies to heart attacks.

Current vaccination policies may not be sufficient to achieve and maintain measles elimination and prevent future resurgence in Australia, Ireland, Italy, the UK and the US, according to a study published in the open access journal BMC Medicine.

Antiviral antibodies produced by survivors of Ebola infection continue to evolve and improve after recovery, according to a study of immune responses in four people who received care at Emory University Hospital in 2014. High levels of neutralizing antibodies- thought to be key to protecting someone against deadly infection -- didn't appear in patients' blood until months after they left the hospital.

Therapies that harness the power of the immune system against cancer have made remarkable progress against certain tumors but still remain ineffective in most cancer patients. A new study from the Massachusetts General Hospital Center for Immunology and Inflammatory Diseases describes a method of reprogramming regulatory T cells that usually suppress immune responses into inflammatory cells that not only permit but also intensify an antitumor immune response.

The existence of certain microorganisms in your gut may bolster the immune system's ability to fend off a herpes viral attack that can cause fatal brain inflammation. Researchers say the findings are the first to suggest that an envelope molecule from a bacterium called Bacteroides fragilis (B. fragilis) might be useful against viral inflammatory diseases. Called capsular polysaccharide A (PSA), the envelope molecule appears to promote protective, anti-inflammatory responses during a viral infection.

Stressful life events most likely contribute to autoimmune diseases, but scientists don't have a deep understanding of the underlying chain of events. A study on mice published this week in mSystems suggests that the gut microbiota may play a significant role in that connection. Researchers found that the onset of stress caused changes in the intestinal bacteria that, in turn, stimulated the activity of immune cells in a way that increased the likelihood that the body would attack itself.