Immune System News and Research

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Sanofi Pasteur's new H5N1 vaccine shows promise

Sanofi pasteur, the vaccines division of sanofi-aventis Group, has announced data showing that its new investigational H5N1 pandemic influenza vaccine containing a proprietary adjuvant achieved a high immune response at the lowest dose of H5N1 antigen reported to date.

18 Sep 2007

Rheumatoid arthritis genes

A paper published this week in the open access journal PLoS Medicine provides strong evidence that one specific part of the genome is associated with rheumatoid arthritis.

18 Sep 2007

Chronic stress can steal years from caregivers' lifetimes

The chronic stress that spouses and children develop while caring for Alzheimer's disease patients may shorten the caregivers' lives by as much as four to eight years, a new study suggests.

18 Sep 2007

Chronic infection persists by targeting stromal cell network in lymphoid organs

One of the biggest challenges to treating infectious diseases and developing preventive vaccines is the ability of many chronic infections to suppress the immune T-cell response over time.

18 Sep 2007

New technology for cancer screening listens for the signs of cancer

Cancer-sensing devices built as cheaply and efficiently as wristwatches - using many of the same operating principles - could change the way clinicians detect, treat and monitor cancer in patients.

18 Sep 2007

Nanoparticle that delivers vaccines more effectively

Good news for public health: Bioengineering researchers from the EPFL in Lausanne, Switzerland, have developed and patented a nanoparticle that can deliver vaccines more effectively, with fewer side effects, and at a fraction of the cost of current vaccine technologies.

18 Sep 2007

Organ transplantation for HIV-positive patients

Not long ago, organ transplantation was not considered an option for HIV infected patients.

17 Sep 2007

LL37 peptide provides a new potential target for autoimmune disease

A human peptide that acts as a natural antibiotic against invading microbes can also bind to the body's own DNA and trigger an immune response in the absence of an infection, a research team led by scientists at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center reports in an early online publication in Nature.

17 Sep 2007

Immune system police recognize good and bad guys in the body

Immune system police are as good at recognizing bad guys, such as bacteria and viruses, as they are our own tissue, researchers say.

17 Sep 2007

North Texas leishmaniasis outbreak

A team of dermatologists and dermatopathologists at UT Southwestern Medical Center has identified nine North Texas cases of an infectious skin disease common in South America, Mexico and in the Middle East, where it is sometimes referred to as a “Baghdad boil.”

17 Sep 2007

Dendritic cells turn T cells into T regs

Regulatory T cells (also known as T regs) suppress some of the immune system's more inappropriate responses, preventing it from attacking the body's own tissues and stifling its activity once invading microbes have been fought off.

17 Sep 2007

Economic development linked to differences in rates of asthma symptoms

Children with allergic sensitizations in economically developed countries are much more likely to develop asthma than similarly sensitized children in poorer countries, according to a team of international researchers.

17 Sep 2007

It's back to the dark ages...hookworms to treat asthma!

Modern medicine may have stopped short of blood-letting, leeches and purges but parasitic worms could be making a come-back!

17 Sep 2007

Attention turns to brain as driver of Chronic Fatigue symptoms

New research from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) has delivered a final blow to the theory that Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) is driven by the body's immune system and in particular by its production of cytokines.

14 Sep 2007

Proteins Nox1 and Nox2 play important role in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis

University of Iowa researchers investigating the basic biology of cell signaling have made a discovery that may have therapeutic implications for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and other neurodegenerative diseases.

13 Sep 2007

Global child deaths have reached a record low

Global child deaths have reached a record low, falling below 10 million per year to 9.7 million, down from almost 13 million in 1990, according to UNICEF.

13 Sep 2007

New understanding of immune infertility

Most of us have never heard of immune infertility, yet it prevents many prospective parents from conceiving. Immune infertility is one of 80 autoimmune disorders, a group that includes better-known diseases like Multiple Sclerosis and Type 1 Diabetes.

13 Sep 2007