Immunology

LIMBURGERHOF, Germany, April 19, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- April 25th marks the fourth annual  World Malaria Day, again to focus on the goal of achieving near zero malaria deaths by 2015, and how different stakeholders are contributing to reaching this target.    BASF is marking the day by telling the story of how a simple initiative can stop the spread of the disease, one step at a time.   Although African communities are under the greatest threat of malaria, the disease is a reality in other developing countries. In some states in Brazil, particularly those located near…

Henry VIII, King of England and founder of the Anglican Church, was basically the Brad Pitt of his day when he was younger.   Charming, attractive and even kind, for a member of the Royal family. Yet he is most remembered for being gluttonous, impaired and executing wives.    What happened? Research conducted by bioarchaeologist Catrina Banks Whitley while a graduate student at Southern Methodist University and anthropologist Kyra Kramer, leads them to speculate that the numerous miscarriages suffered by Henry's wives could be explained if the king's blood carried the Kell…

Bacteria attack with toxins designed to hijack or kill host cells but they have ways of protecting themselves from their own toxins.   Researchers have described one of these protective mechanisms, potentially paving the way for new classes of antibiotics that cause the bacteria's toxins to turn on themselves. Scientists determined the structures of a toxin and its antitoxin in Streptococcus pyogenes, common bacteria that cause infections ranging from strep throat to life-threatening conditions like rheumatic fever. In Strep, the antitoxin is bound to the toxin in a way that keeps the…

Avian influenza, bird flu, causes the unnecessary deaths of millions of chickens each year, preventing them from instead being killed for my dinner. Luckily, science is on the case, though irrational left-wing anti-science types won't like the solution; breeding chickens resistant to it. Obviously the meat and eggs from these chickens cannot in any conceivable way be different from any other egg but the same mentality that leads people to believe the world will end because of a Mayan calendar can allow people to believe these eggs can be different, so look for the usual protests. The super…

Humans have greater susceptibility than other primates to certain infectious diseases which could be explained by species-specific changes in immune signaling pathways, a University of Chicago study finds. The first genome-wide, functional comparison of genes regulated by the innate immune system in three primate species discovers potential mediators of differences in disease susceptibility among primates.  Humans are more sensitive than chimpanzees to the severe effects of certain viral infections, such as progression of HIV to AIDS or severe complications from hepatitis B. Genomic…

Writing in Blood, a group says that a 2007 adult stem cell transplant cured a patient of both his HIV and his leukemia.   Up to 33 million people worldwide have HIV/AIDS. How did it work and what does it mean?  It was a perfect storm of good fortune for the patient so it's an interesting medical starting point but not really a cure-all just yet.   Timothy Brown, an HIV-positive man in Germany, also had leukemia and was undergoing chemotherapy but he got a bone marrow transplant  from a donor who carried an inherited CCR5 gene mutation that seems to make carriers immune to…

CORAL GABLES, Florida, December 6, 2010 /PRNewswire/ -- In an unprecedented move, chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) patients published a half-page ad in The Washington Post today. The ad brings attention to new, HIV-like retroviruses, including XMRV, which have been linked to CFS and aggressive prostate cancer, and have been detected in healthy blood donors. The ad was created through the ME/CFS Worldwide Patient Alliance (MCWPA), a grassroots patient collaboration formed in August 2010 with the support of P.A.N.D.O.R.A., Inc. (http://www.pandoranet.info). From their beds and wheelchairs,…

If you've been to a hospital to see a newborn you've likely been assaulted by a number of sprays and soaps before even getting near the little critter.   You'd have to wonder how you ever survived as a child without antibacterial soaps, wipes and special clothing. It's mostly marketing and it's unclear what effects it will have on the environment but there is no way to stop it now because killing microorganisms has become a national obsession. A pair of antimicrobial compounds known as triclosan and triclocarban are the weapons of choice in society's war of attrition against the…

Haemoglobin S (HbS) is known to cause sickle cell disease and it is usually fatal if untreated so shouldn't natural selection have eliminated it?     Instead, the sickle cell gene is common in people of African, Mediterranean and Indian origin, areas with historically high levels of malaria.    A new study says such geographical adds to the hypothesis that the gene, though deadly, avoids disappearing through natural selection by providing protection against malaria. More than sixty years ago, researchers observed that the sickle cell gene tended to be more common in…

The number of times the common cold has been cured, or prevented, is far too long a list for this site - though recently those claims have been overtaken by the kookier segments of homeopathy. But researchers at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge say they are onto something.    Ordinarily, once a virus has invaded the human cell, the battle is over and even antibiotics don't help as they can against bacteria - but the researchers now say some antibodies remain and can form a 'last line of defense' against viruses, even inside cells.   Their study in PNAS…