immune response

Scissor-like enzyme that trims fatty acids from protein molecules points toward treatment of infectious disease
04/05/2013 - 11:12

UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers report that a pathogen annually blamed for an estimated 90 million cases of food-borne illness defeats a host’s immune response by using a fat-snipping enzyme to cut off cellular communication.

 

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Loneliness, Like Chronic Stress, Taxes the Immune System
01/22/2013 - 10:10

New research links loneliness to a number of dysfunctional immune responses, suggesting that being lonely has the potential to harm overall health.

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Study Suggests Immune System Can Boost Regeneration of Peripheral Nerves
10/03/2012 - 10:03

Modulating immune response to injury could accelerate the regeneration of severed peripheral nerves, a new study in an animal model has found. By altering activity of the macrophage cells that respond to injuries, researchers dramatically increased the rate at which nerve processes regrew.

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Lungs respond to hospital ventilator as if it were an infection
07/18/2012 - 18:12

When hospital patients need assistance breathing and are placed on a mechanical ventilator for days at a time, their lungs react to the pressure generated by the ventilator with an out-of-control immune response that can lead to excessive inflammation, new research suggests.

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Transcription factor Lyl-1 critical in producing early T-cell progenitors
07/09/2012 - 08:09

A transcription factor called Lyl-1 is necessary for production of the earliest cells that can become T-cells, critical cells born in the thymus that coordinate the immune response to cancer or infections, said a consortium of researchers led by those from Baylor College of Medicine in a report in the journal Nature Immunology.

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Exhaustion Renders Immune Cells Less Effective in Cancer Treatment
05/09/2012 - 09:59

Rather than stimulating immune cells to more effectively battle cancerous tumors, treatment with the protein interleukin-12 (IL-12) has the opposite effect, driving these intracellular fighters to exhaustion, a Mayo Clinic study has found. The findings appear in the Journal of Clinical Investigation. The study helps explain the negative results of clinical trials testing the treatment's ability to ramp up the body's natural immune response to destroy cancer cells. The study also demonstrates that the same "T cell exhaustion" that plagues specialized immune cells during chronic viral infections also affects cells fighting long bouts of cancer.

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