immunity News and Research

RSS

SARS-CoV-2 viral antigens found in non-pulmonary tissues in recovering patients

A team of researchers in Singapore, led by Dr. Joe Yeong, and Prof. Tony Kiat Hon Lim, have reported the presence of residual SARS-CoV-2 ribonucleic acid (RNA) – the virus' genetic material – in stool samples and gastrointestinal tissues from patients recovering from the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).

8 Nov 2020

Innate immunity key to limiting viral load in COVID-19 cases

As the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic continues to cause many difficulties for public health authorities, research is ongoing to understand how the virus can cause fatal effects on those infected and thereby suggest effective preventive and therapeutic measures against it.

8 Nov 2020

TB screening needed for people on methotrexate who live in at-risk areas

New research presented at ACR Convergence, the American College of Rheumatology's annual meeting, shows that tuberculosis (TB) screening and ongoing clinical care is needed for people on methotrexate who live in areas where the highly infectious illness is common.

6 Nov 2020

Study: Genetically edited form of herpes simplex virus outperforms leading vaccine candidate

A genetically edited form of a herpes simplex virus -- rewired to keep it from taking refuge in the nervous system and eluding an immune response -- has outperformed a leading vaccine candidate in a new study from the University of Cincinnati, Northwestern University and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

6 Nov 2020

Reducing the airborne transmission risk for SARS-CoV-2

Rapid Reviews: COVID-19 (RR:C19), an open-access overlay journal published by the MIT Press that accelerates peer review of COVID-19-related research preprints, is currently soliciting reviews of the following COVID-19 preprints.

6 Nov 2020

UNICEF and WHO issue urgent call to action to avert measles, polio epidemics

UNICEF and the World Health Organization (WHO) today issued an urgent call to action to avert major measles and polio epidemics as COVID-19 continues to disrupt immunization services worldwide, leaving millions of vulnerable children at heightened risk of preventable childhood diseases.

6 Nov 2020

Ground-breaking discovery provides new insight into how proteins operate

A ground-breaking discovery by Centenary Institute scientists has provided new understanding as to the nature of proteins and how they exist and operate in the human body.

5 Nov 2020

Study shows T cells can prevent Zika infection in mice

Where Aedes mosquitoes fly, Zika virus may not be far behind. Although the explosive 2015–2016 Zika epidemics in the Americas are behind us, Zika may re-emerge, and "in many countries, Zika may be spreading in silence," says Sujan Shresta, Ph.D., a professor at La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI).

5 Nov 2020

Novel approach for modeling spread of infectious disease

The rapid spread of SARS-CoV-2 across the world despite the early shutdown of borders and the cessation of international travel has sparked interest and given rise to changes in knowledge regarding the spread of infections.

4 Nov 2020

Living with children does not increase adults’ risk of severe COVID-19, say researchers

Researchers working on behalf of NHS England have found no evidence that adults who live with school-age children are at any increased risk of severe outcomes following infection with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) – the agent that causes coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).

4 Nov 2020

Chikungunya can infect central nervous system and impair cognitive, motor functions

A study conducted by an international team of researchers with FAPESP's support shows that infection by chikungunya virus can produce even more severe manifestations than the typical symptoms of the disease, such as acute fever, headache, rash, and intense joint and muscle pain.

4 Nov 2020

Most SARS-CoV-2-infected individuals develop durable B cell-mediated immunity

Researchers from the Johns Hopkins University and The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, Maryland, USA, investigated the durability of B cell immunity following SARS-CoV-2 infection and recovery in their recent work published on the preprint server medRxiv.

3 Nov 2020

SARS-CoV-2 T-cell immunity is retained for at least six months

Now, a new study published on the preprint server bioRxiv shows that functional SARS-CoV-2-specific T-cell responses are retained for six months following infection. However, the strength of this response depends on the clinical features of the primary infection.

3 Nov 2020

Study finds a subset of quick COVID-19 healers and antibody 'sustainers'

One of the pressing questions about COVID-19 remains: How long does immunity last? One key indicator of immunity is the presence of virus-specific antibodies.

3 Nov 2020

Fight against trachoma disrupted by COVID-19 pandemic

Progress towards the elimination of trachoma as a public health problem has been substantial, but the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted community-based control efforts.

2 Nov 2020

Study sheds new light on how the immune system remembers viruses

For a person to acquire immunity to a disease, T cells must develop into memory cells after contact with the pathogen.

2 Nov 2020

The Sun plays a role in the evolution of viral respiratory epidemics

Why do most viral epidemics spread cyclically in autumn and winter in the globe's temperate regions? According to an interdisciplinary team of researchers of the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics, the University of Milan, the Lombardy regional agency for the environment and the Don Gnocchi Foundation, the answer is intimately related to our Sun: their theoretical model shows that both the prevalence and evolution of epidemics are strongly correlated with the amount of daily solar irradiation that hits a given location on the Earth at a given time of the year.

2 Nov 2020

Study: COVID-19 lockdowns increase the number of polio cases in Pakistan

A spike in the number of polio cases in Pakistan — the last refuge of the virus in the world along with neighbouring Afghanistan — is being attributed by health experts to disruption in vaccination services caused by lockdowns and restrictions against spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.

2 Nov 2020

SARS-CoV-2 virus may target red marrow and prevent the formation of new erythrocytes

Specialists from the Department of Fundamental Medicine of Far Eastern Federal University (FEFU) with Russian and Japanese colleagues have probed into mechanisms of COVID-19 inside-the-body distribution linked to erythrocytes damaging.

30 Oct 2020

First-of-its-kind synthetic DNA vaccine designed against Powassan virus

Scientists at The Wistar Institute have designed and tested the first-of-its-kind synthetic DNA vaccine against Powassan virus (POWV), targeting portions of the virus envelope protein.

30 Oct 2020