Since 1996 WHN is the second oldest medical website on the net, second only to the American Medical Association, servicing over 35,000 physicians and scientists worldwide.
Non-Profit Trusted Source of Non-Commercial Health Information
Scientists at the University of Cambridge report discovering a type of white blood cell that exists as a single large population of cells that constantly move around the body looking for and repairing damaged tissues. Their findings published in the journal Immunity overturn traditional thinking that regulatory T cells exist as multiple specialist populations which …
Research At A Glance: Children who regularly ate peanut-containing foods early in life had a greatly reduced risk of developing peanut allergy into adolescence. Introducing peanut-containing foods as early as 4 to 6 months of age could potentially prevent tens of thousands of cases of peanut allergy each year. Peanut allergy is one of the …
The health benefits of exercise are well known but new research shows that the body’s response to exercise is more complex and far-reaching than previously thought. In a study on rats, a team of scientists from across the United States has found that physical activity causes many cellular and molecular changes in all 19 of …
At a Glance: Researchers found that depleting certain stem cells improved the immune systems of aged mice. The findings suggest that a similar treatment might be used to help protect older people against infections. The risk for serious infections rises with age, as people’s immune systems lose the ability to respond to novel infections. Part …
A multidisciplinary team of scientists led by the University of Helsinki reports that a progressive neurodegenerative disease can be triggered by a viral infection. The mechanism relates to mitochondrial roles in antiviral defense mechanisms. The scientists report that a specific gene variant affecting the mitochondria disturbs cellular antiviral defense responses. The results implicate that viral …
Lyme disease, a bacterial infection transmitted by ticks, affects nearly half a million people in the United States every year. In most cases, antibiotics effectively clear the infection, but for some patients, symptoms linger for months or years. Researchers at MIT and the University of Helsinki have now discovered that human sweat contains a protein …
A new Northwestern Medicine study has found the immune system in the blood of Alzheimer’s patients is epigenetically altered. That means the patients’ behavior or environment has caused changes that affect the way their genes work. Many of these altered immune genes are the same ones that increase an individual’s risk for Alzheimer’s. Northwestern scientists …
Research Highlights: Alterations in gut microbiota may influence immune system changes during pregnancy. However, the connection isn’t well known. Researchers in China analyzed gut microbiota, metabolites and cytokines in healthy, pregnant and non-pregnant young women. The new study identifies numerous pathways by which the gut microbiome may change the immune system. During pregnancy, a woman’s …
Image Credit: NIAID There is a long-held belief that acute viral infections are directly responsible for neurological damage, however, researchers from McMaster University have discovered that it is the immune system’s responses that are behind the damage, and they have published their research in Nature Communications. “We were interested in trying to understand why so …
For years, researchers and clinicians have known that lupus, an autoimmune condition, occurs in women at a rate nine times higher than in men. Some of the factors that cause the disease’s high prevalence in women have eluded discovery, but in a new study investigating the immune system processes in lupus and the X chromosome, …