116 Articles with the topic: Immunology


Influenza A Virus Neuraminidase Limits Viral Superinfection
sea-maid submitted, created time 6 months 1 week (jvi.asm.org)
Enveloped viruses use multiple mechanisms to inhibit infection of a target cell by more than one virion. These mechanisms may be of particular importance for the evolution of segmented viruses, because superinfection exclusion may limit the frequency of reassortment of viral genes.
In this study, the author shows that cellular expression of influenza A virus neuraminidase (NA), but not hemagglutinin (HA) or the M2 proton pump, inhibits entry of HA-pseudotyped retroviruses 


Chemical from Medicinal Plants May Be Used to Fight HIV
piggy submitted, created time 4 days 5 hours (www.sciencedaily.com)
Like other kinds of cells, immune cells lose the ability to divide as they age because a part of their chromosomes known as a telomere becomes progressively shorter with cell division. As a result, the cell changes in many ways, and its disease fighting ability is compromised.
But a new UCLA AIDS Institute study has found that a chemical from the Astragalus root, frequently used in Chinese herbal therapy, can prevent or slow this progressive telomere shortening, which could make it a key weapon in the fight against HIV 


jerry submitted, created time 5 months 7 hours (www.time.com)
Doctors have long suspected that people with herpes are more likely to catch HIV. So they thought that by treating herpes, they could also cut a person's HIV risk. But a new study that tested this strategy found the assumption may have been wrong. 


Scientists turbo-charge immune cells to fight cancer
piggy submitted, created time 2 weeks 3 days (news.yahoo.com)
Scientists in the United States have created super-charged immune cells that helped beat back cancer tumors in half of a small group of patients tested, according to a study released Sunday.
Adding an artificial receptor to T-lymphocyte immune cells boosted their ability to fight a deadly form of cancer called neuroblastoma, the researchers reported.
Neuroblastoma attacks the nervous system. While fairly rare, it accounts for seven percent of all childhood cancers, and fifteen percent of non-adult cancer deaths 


How the Body Determines Optimal Amount of Germ-Fighting B Cells
piggy submitted, created time 1 week 4 days (www.sciencedaily.com)
Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine can now explain how the body determines whether there are enough mature B-cells in the blood stream at any one time. These are the cells that produce antibodies against germs to fight infections.
“There is a steady state number of B cells that is considered normal for humans,” says senior author Michael P. Cancro, PhD, Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine 


New Role for Critical DNA Repair Molecule in Immune System
piggy submitted, created time 1 week 4 days (www.sciencedaily.com)
The human immune system is a brilliantly adaptable weapon against foreign invaders. But it all depends on the work of specialized cells called lymphocytes that have made a risky evolutionary gambit to mutate their own DNA. New research published in Nature shows for the first time that a molecule devoted to DNA repair plays a broader role in this genetic reshuffling — called recombination — than scientists had thought 
sea-maid submitted, created time 6 months 2 weeks (www.jcb.org)
The function of macrophage is to block a molecular motor that helps drag bacteria and other potential enemies into the macrophage. CD47 plays an important role in this process: self CD47 prevents cells that carry it from being eaten. 


Resistance to drugs responsible for half of deaths from infections
sea-maid submitted, created time 5 months 1 week (www.bmj.com)
Multidrug resistant bacteria are responsible for about half of the 37,000 deaths a year in the 27 member states of the European Union that are caused by infections associated with health care, show the preliminary results of research from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control in Stockholm. 


Rotavirus and rotavirus vaccines
sea-maid submitted, created time 4 months 3 weeks (www.latimes.com)
So far so good for the new rotavirus vaccine. It has delayed the onset of the most recent season by three months, and the number of cases was the lowest since tracking of the infection began.
The rotavirus causes severe vomiting and diarrhea in infants and small children. 


Rheumatoid Arthritis Breakthrough
piggy submitted, created time 1 week 1 day (www.sciencedaily.com)
Rheumatoid arthritis is a painful, inflammatory type of arthritis that occurs when the body's immune system attacks itself. A new article reports a breakthrough in the understanding of how autoimmune responses can be controlled, offering a promising new strategy for therapy development for rheumatoid arthritis.
Normally, immune cells develop to recognise foreign material – antigens; including bacteria - so that they can activate a response against them. Immune cells that would respond to 'self' and therefore attack the body's own cells are usually destroyed during development 


How Eating Red Meat Can Spur Cancer Progression: New Mechanism Identified
piggy submitted, created time 1 week 5 hours (www.sciencedaily.com)
Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, led by Ajit Varki, M.D., have shown a new mechanism for how human consumption of red meat and milk products could contribute to the increased risk of cancerous tumors.
Their findings, which suggest that inflammation resulting from a molecule introduced through consumption of these foods could promote tumor growth, are published online this week in advance of print publication in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) 
Prions are usefull for disease
sea-maid submitted, created time 6 months 3 weeks (www.jcb.org)
The results of recent investigatoins suggest that normal prions might exert their protective effect on neurons by switching off a particular subset of NMDA receptors that contain a subunit called NR2D. The work also suggests a mechanism for the brain damage caused by prion diseases. Malformed prions coax normal molecules to misfold. As the amount of normal protein falls, neurons lose their protectors and become more vulnerable to death by overstimulation. 


sea-maid submitted, created time 6 months 3 weeks (www.reuters.com)
Making antibodies is necessary for the treatment of infectious diseases such as hepatitis C, pneumococcal pneumonia and anthrax. But the tradional methods of making antibodies is inefficienct, and now in this article proposes a new process for the extraction and copying of the essential elements of cells that make human antibodies. It may serve as a shortcut to making targeted, infection-fighting proteins known as monoclonal antibodies. 


TIPE2, a Negative Regulator of Innate and Adaptive Immunity that Maintains Immune Homeostasis
kavin submitted, created time 6 months 2 weeks (www.cell.com)
It is known that immune homeostasis is essential for the normal functioning of the immune system, and its breakdown leads to fatal inflammatory diseases. In this paper, the authors found that TIPE2 is an essential negative regulator of TLR and TCR function, and its selective expression in the immune system prevents hyperresponsiveness and maintains immune homeostasis. 


AVR2, a fungal effector protein targets diversifying defense-related cys proteases of tomato
kavin submitted, created time 6 months 2 weeks (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
In this paper, secretion of protease inhibitor AVR2 by C. fulvum during infection suggests that tomato papain-like cysteine proteases (PLCPs) are part of the tomato defense response. They show that the tomato apoplast contains a remarkable diversity of PLCP activities with seven PLCPs that fall into four different subfamilies. 