Immunology

Scienceagogo claims that having sex when you are sick can boost your immune system. “Healthcare Magic” seems to bring the question of is it ok to have sex when sick or with a flu mainly down to whether you infect others. The most important result of my whole last week: If you are already sick with the sniffles, just don’t do it! No matter how sexy she (or whatever rocks your boat) is – it isn’t worth the risk. I did it again – little self restraint that I have – and now I am paying for it again, and dearly this time. I was almost through it, could not hold out another day, and so it came…

Science for the win! A paper claiming a viral link to puzzling Chronic Fatigue Syndrome has been withdrawn by Science.  Since publication in October, 2009 it had been met with controversy by scientists and hope by patients. Chronic fatigue syndrome affects millions of people worldwide with physical and mental fatigue that does not improve with rest but its causes remain unclear. Many people say their illness started after a viral infection so that is where the 2009 research focused and a paper by researchers at Whittemore Peterson Institute for Neuro-Immune Disease in Reno detected…

The development of simple tests to predict a leukemic relapse in young patients has come a step closer. Approximately 20 percent of young leukemia patients who are treated with stem cells derived from umbilical cord blood will experience leukemic relapse but new research findings published in Blood demonstrate that the blame falls partially on T cells, a subset of white blood cells.  The researchers analyzed blood samples from young children who received an umbilical cord blood transplant for the treatment of blood disorders, including leukemia. They were particularly interested in…

If you're worried about getting the flu, chances are that you got an influenza vaccine; these are created on an annual basis and use a method from the 1950s; it is egg-based technology, literally produced in chicken eggs.  Some vaccines, like polio, are now created using laboratory-grown cell lines that are capable of hosting a growing virus.  The first is inefficient, the second is expensive.(1) The future of vaccines looks a little different. The race is on to create a universal flu vaccine, one that does not have to be recreated each year, and to also bring the technology…

Well, according to a new study, blame the micro RNAs (miRNAs) linked to the X chromosome. The study, published in  BioEssays, investigated the observation that women live longer than males and are more able to fight off shock episodes of sepsis, infection or trauma. Thus, the researchers from Ghent University, Belgium, decided to take a look at the X chromosome and the miRNAs linked to it. Micro RNAs are small bits of ribonucleic acid (RNA) that are found in the vast majority of eukaryotic cells. These tiny bits of RNA are post-transcriptional regulators that bind a specific target…

Gonorrhea is a sexually transmitted disease (STD) that causes urethritis and pelvic inflammatory disease.  Before AIDS, this was what you got for having promiscuous, unprotected sex with many anonymous partners in a consequence-free environment (a period known as "The 1970s" yet often assumed to be the '60s) and when you contracted it you took some antibiotics and then it was back to Studio 54. Not today. Neisseria gonorrhea is evolving into multiresistant bacteria - resistant to most antibiotics, which means most treatments are now ineffective. Japan reported the first example…

Some people have no fingerprints.  That might be handy in a burglary but it can be an issue when passing through immigration or in security situations where a fingerprint is required, like getting a notary public to take your five bucks for some benign document. Like DNA, fingerprints are unique to each person or set of identical twins. That makes them a valuable identification tool for everything from crime detection to international travel. But what happens when the tips of our fingers are missing those distinctive patterns of ridges? The condition is known as adermatoglyphia and it…

In many cases, you can determine a child's age by what affliction their helicopter parents have saddled them with and you don't even have to meet the kid.  If they are ADHD, for example, they are likely close to graduating high school.  If you look in a grade school today, 25 percent of kids will be on 'the spectrum' for Autism and those that aren't may have a life-threatening allergy. A generation ago, very few children had allergies to nuts and so it was taken seriously.   Today, with hyperactive parents flipping out in restaurants over nothing every day, there is a lot more…

Right now on the east coast of Australia where I live, we have an outbreak of the deadly Hendra Virus (HeV) which kills horses and humans and even infects dogs and I have to admit that I’m scared, especially as I own 3 horses and 3 dogs. Over the last month of July 2011, 14 horses have died and have potentially infected 55 people who are being tested for HeV and remain under observation along with any horses, dogs and cats that also came into contact with the sick horses. This is required even when that contact occurred before the infected horses started to exhibit any symptoms of the…

Endocarditis is a dangerous and sometimes lethal infection of the heart sometimes caused after a dental procedure.     Streptococcus mutans is a bacterium best known for causing cavities. The bacteria reside in dental plaque, an architecturally sophisticated goo composed of an elaborate molecular matrix created by S. mutans that allows the bacteria to inhabit and thrive in our oral cavity. There, they churn out acid that erodes our teeth.    Ordinarily, that is the end of it, but sometimes after a dental procedure or even vigorous flossing, the bacteria enter the…