Immunology

A new study has found a way to prevent some of the most serious foodborne illnesses caused by pathogenic bacteria, like Escherichia coli (E. coli): cinnamon. A new paper in Food Control suggests Cinnamomum cassia oil can work effectively as a natural antibacterial agent in the food industry - that's welcome news for organic food, which has higher risks of spreading bacteria like E. coli.  In the study, the essential oil killed several strains of Shiga toxin-producing E. coli, known to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as "non-O157 STEC." The study looked at the top six…

Cases of the highly contagious drug-resistant bacteria carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae  (CRE), have increased fivefold in community hospitals in the Southeastern United States, according to a new study in Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology. CRE are a class of highly antibiotic-resistant bacteria that are not susceptible to most commonly-used antibiotics. Labeled "one of the three greatest threats to human health" by the World Health Organization, these dangerous pathogens can cause infections in the urinary tract, lungs, blood, and other areas. Patients with CRE…

Cachexia is a profound wasting of fat and muscle occurring in about half of all cancer patients, raising their risk of death. Many strategies have been tried to reverse the condition, which may cause such frailty that patients can't endure potentially life-saving treatments, but none have had great success. Researchers recently demonstrated that, in mice bearing lung tumors, their symptoms of cachexia improved or were prevented when given an antibody that blocked the effects of a protein, PTHrP, secreted by the tumor cells. PTHrP stands for parathyroid hormone-related protein, and is known to…

If you grew up on a farm, you may have gotten sick lots of times due to exposure to any number of microorgansms. You might not remember getting sick more then, but a new study finds you are less likely to have chronic maladies as an adult. New research conducted at Aarhus University finds that people who have grown up on a farm with livestock are only half as likely as urban counterparts to develop the most common inflammatory bowel diseases: ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease.    The study indicates that people born after 1952 who spent the first five years of their lives…

Re-introducing a type of polio vaccine, the injected polio vaccine (IPV), that fell out of favor in the 1960s could hasten eradication of the disease, according to new research. The injected polio vaccine is rarely used today, it lost in competition against the oral polio vaccine (OPV), but it could provide better and longer lasting protection against infection if used in combination with the more commonly used live OPV, write researchers from Imperial College London and the Christian Medical College in Vellore, India, today in The Lancet. Vaccination protects an individual against…

The child known as the "Mississippi baby", an infant cured of HIV in a case study published in The New England Journal of Medicine last fall, now has detectable levels of HIV after more than two years without taking antiretroviral therapy and without evidence of virus, according to the pediatric HIV specialist and researchers involved in the case.   The child was born prematurely in a Mississippi clinic in 2010 to an HIV-infected mother who did not receive antiretroviral medication during pregnancy and was not diagnosed with HIV infection until the time of delivery. Because of the high…

Researchers have discovered the link between antibiotics and bacterial biofilm formation leading to chronic lung, sinus and ear infections. Bacterial biofilms can actually thrive, rather than decrease, when given low doses of antibiotics.  Biofilms are highly structured communities of microorganisms that attach to one another and to surfaces. The microorganisms group together and form a slimy, polysaccharide cover. This layer is highly protective for the organisms within it, and when new bacteria are produced they stay within the slimy layer. With the introduction of antibiotic-produced…

Molecular microbiologists have discovered that mice lacking a specific component of the immune system are completely resistant to sepsis, a potentially fatal complication of infection. The immune system is the body's first line of defense against infection. The system, however, can also injure the body if it is not turned off after the infection is destroyed, or if it is turned on when there is no infection at all. Scientists do not yet fully understand how the immune response is turned on and off and continue to study it in hopes of harnessing its power to cure disease. In this study,…

Ask an older person what it is like to be under the constant threat of infectious disease. They love vaccines and they love antibiotics because everyone once knew someone who was crippled or died due to an inability to prevent or cure serious illnesses. But it won't be wealthy progressive elites who send us back to a "Dark Ages of medicine" with their anti-vaccine fad, warned UK Prime Minister David Cameron last week, it is more likely be the growing threat of resistance to antibiotics. Since 1945, when penicillin became a widespread treatment, humanity has had a relatively easy time of…

Some viruses can hide in our bodies for decades. How do they escape notice and destruction? They have 'fake' human proteins that trick our immune cells into thinking they belong.  Now, researchers at the Imaging Centre of Excellence at Monash and Melbourne Universities have determined the basic structure of one of the two known families of these deceptive proteins. In their paper, they describe the structure of m04 immunoevasin from mouse cytomegalovirus, a member of the m02 protein family. Cytomegaloviruses belong to the herpesvirus family whose members can cause glandular fever,…