Concerns over vaccination seems to have permeated society, and parents have many questions about the safety of vaccines. One important question is whether vaccinations strain or weaken children’s immune systems and are therefore harmful to them. Roma Schmitz and her colleagues from the Robert Koch Institute investigated this research question in the current issue of Deutsches Ärzteblatt International. The o ...

A study of more than 3,000 children shows that low vitamin D levels are associated with increased likelihood that children will develop allergies, according to a paper published in the February 17 online edition of the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology. Researchers from Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University headed the study. ...

Loneliness is no fun — and now it appears it is bad for you as well. UCLA researchers report that chronically lonely people may be at higher risk for certain types of inflammatory disease because their feelings of social isolation trigger the activity of pro-inflammatory immune cells. Steven Cole, a member of the UCLA Cousins Center for Psychoneuroimmunology, an associate professor of medicine in the divisi ...

Genes linked to the immune system can affect healthy people’s personality traits as well as the risk of developing mental illness and suicidal behaviour reveals a thesis from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Inflammation is part of the immune system and is responsible for defending humans against infection as well as fascilitating the healing of injuries, and is therefore vital for our survival. ...

When babies are given antibiotics, their risk of developing asthma by age 6 may increase by 50 percent. This relationship between antibiotic use in babies less than six months old and risk of developing asthma was documented in a study conducted by Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) researcher Kari Risnes. The publisher has made the original study available for free for undetermined lengt ...

Scientists have identified a protein that acts as a “master switch” in certain white blood cells and determines whether they promote or inhibit inflammation. The study, published in the journal Nature Immunology, could help researchers look for new treatments for diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis that involve excessive inflammation. Inflammatory responses are an important defence that the body uses agai ...

Scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute, have developed a novel technology that is able to detect the presence of immune molecules specific to Alzheimer’s disease in patients’ blood samples. While still preliminary, the findings offer clear proof that this breakthrough technology could be used in the development of biomarkers for a range of human diseases. The study, led by Scri ...

CSF researchers have identified an existing medication that restores key elements of the immune system that, when out of balance, lead to a steady decline in immunity and health as people age. The team found that extremely low doses of the drug lenalidomide can stimulate the body's immune-cell protein factories, which decrease production during aging, and rebalance the levels of several key cytokines – immu ...

After recovering from a cold or other infection, your body’s immune system is primed to react quickly if the same agent tries to infect you. White blood cells called memory T cells specifically remember the virus or bacterium and patrol the body looking for it. Vaccines work on the same principle: Harmless fragments of a virus or bacterium provoke the immune system to generate memory T cells that can attack ...

In an effort to pinpoint potential triggers leading to inflammatory responses that eventually contribute to depression, researchers are taking a close look at the immune system of people living in today's cleaner modern society. Rates of depression in younger people have steadily grown to outnumber rates of depression in the older populations and researchers think it may be because of a loss of healthy bact ...