immunity News and Research

RSS

Syphilis bacterium likely uses a single gene to evade immune attack

The bacterium that causes syphilis, Treponema pallidum, likely uses a single gene to escape the immune system, research from UW Medicine in Seattle suggests.

24 Apr 2020

Vaping, opioid addiction accelerate coronavirus risks, says NIDA director

In 2018, opioid overdoses claimed about 47,000 American lives. Last year, federal authorities reported that 5.4 million middle and high school students vaped. And just two months ago, about 2,800 cases of vaping-associated lung injuries resulted in hospitalizations; 68 people died.

24 Apr 2020

Born into a pandemic: Virus complicates births for moms and babies

Mallory Pease's contractions grew stronger as her husband, Mitchell, drove her to Oaklawn Hospital in Marshall, Michigan, to give birth to their second child. It had been a routine pregnancy, but she told her doctor she'd recently developed a sore throat, aches, coughing and shortness of breath — symptoms her provider knew could indicate COVID-19.

24 Apr 2020

Combination therapy boosts the immune system's appetite for cancer

A combination of immunotherapy agents that encourages some immune cells to eat cancer cells and alert others to attack tumors put mice with a deadly type of brain cancer called glioblastoma into long-term remission, a new study led by UT Southwestern scientists suggests.

24 Apr 2020

Dietary supplements are effective and low-cost means to fight COVID-19

Supplements containing vitamins C and D and other micronutrients, sometimes in amounts exceeding the federally recommended levels, are a safe, effective and low-cost means of helping your immune system fight off COVID-19 and other acute respiratory tract diseases, an Oregon State University researcher says.

24 Apr 2020

Top biochip firms speed up development of fast, reliable COVID-19 test

Surfix B.V., together with its shareholders Qurin Diagnostics B.V. and LioniX International B.V., already successfully developing bio-photonic nanochips for cancer detection and other applications, today announces an accelerated development plan to allow mass-scale COVID-19 diagnosis and immunity detection with the financial support and in close collaboration with PhotonDelta.

24 Apr 2020

Sweden may reach ‘herd immunity’ in weeks as the country resists total lockdown

Herd immunity is a form of indirect protection against infectious diseases where a population develops sufficient immunity to a disease that that infection cannot spread within the group. A population can reach herd immunity if a large proportion has been exposed to the virus. Now, Sweden resisted total lockdown measures, unlike its neighboring countries, while experts believe herd immunity will be achieved in Stockholm within weeks.

24 Apr 2020

Research looks at best ways to tackle coronavirus crisis

A new study published in the journal Frontiers in Microbiology in April 2020 discusses the most attractive approaches among the broad spectrum of experimental and theoretical strategies being worked on to counter the COVID-19 pandemic.

24 Apr 2020

Minimizing COVID-19 infection through controlled exposure

A new study published in the preprint journal medRxiv in April 2020 explores the possibilities of launching smaller waves of voluntary social exposure in a controlled way, to avoid the occurrence of a single large and probably unmanageable second wave of infection.

23 Apr 2020

Poor quality testing could increase number of COVID-19 infections

A new study published in the preprint open-access journal medRxiv in April 2020 assesses the value of untargeted testing for infection or immunity in COVID-19 vs. high-quality targeted testing in keeping down the number of infections while slowly relaxing lockdown measures.

23 Apr 2020

U.S. may have to spend hundreds of billions treating COVID-19

A new study published in the journal Health Affairs in April 2020 quantifies the financial and resource burden which could be placed on the U.S. healthcare system at varying levels of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV2) community spread.

23 Apr 2020

KHN’s ‘What the Health?’: Whom do we trust for COVID info?

Congress is approving still more money to address the health and economic fallout of the ongoing novel coronavirus pandemic.

23 Apr 2020

Using 'own' immune cells to fight infectious diseases including COVID-19

A provocative paper from Duke-NUS Medical School, published in the Journal of Experimental Medicine in March 2020, discusses the possibilities of creating new receptors on a sick person's own immune cells as a means of controlling the infection. This therapy is already being used to treat certain cancers with marked success.

22 Apr 2020

Hyperferritinemia associated with increased illness severity in COVID-19

Yehuda Shoenfeld is the world's leading expert in the research, treatment and prevention of autoimmune diseases.

22 Apr 2020

Antibodies to COVID-19 present in only 2 to 3 percent of population

This week on Monday (20th April 2020), in a press meet, the World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General said that only around 2 to 3 percent of the global population have antibodies that show they had been infected by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) that causes COVID-19 disease.

22 Apr 2020

Study identifies a promising new strategy for combating malaria

Researchers have discovered a promising new strategy for combating malaria, a mosquito-borne parasite that claims nearly a half-million lives each year.

22 Apr 2020

Have we found a new malaria vaccine?

A new study published in the journal Nature in April 2020 reports on a malaria protein antibody that appears to protect resistant children from severe disease, showing promise in the fight against malaria, a new study found. Almost 500,000 people die of malaria every year.

22 Apr 2020

Emergex partners with George Mason University for highly pathogenic RNA virus studies

Emergex Vaccines Holding Limited, a biotechnology company developing CD8+ priming set-point vaccines to prevent serious infectious diseases, today announced that it has entered into an agreement with the George Mason University, based in Virginia, in the United States.

22 Apr 2020

A first-in-human trial with promising MERS coronavirus vaccine

Over the past 20 years, coronaviruses have been responsible for large outbreaks, resulting in severe respiratory illness and a number of deaths.

22 Apr 2020

Scripps Research established international network to find antiviral compounds against COVID-19

With the COVID-19 pandemic continuing to spread around the globe, Scripps Research has quickly established an international network of collaborating scientific laboratories to leverage ReFRAME, the world's leading drug repurposing collection, to find antiviral compounds against the novel coronavirus.

22 Apr 2020