Health Problems

Can a combination immune therapy reduce genital herpes outbreaks?

Yale investigators have shown that the combination of a vaccine and a medicated cream is a promising strategy to dramatically reduce the recurrence of genital herpes. Their study, co-led by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and University of Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, was published in the journal npj Vaccines. Herpes simplex virus (HSV) […]

Health Problems

Immune therapy takes a ‘BiTE’ out of brain cancer

Building on their research showing that an exciting new form of immunotherapy for cancer has activity in patients with glioblastoma, the most common and most deadly form of brain cancer, Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) investigators have created a new method that could make immune therapy more effective again brain tumors and expand its use against […]

Health Problems

Newly discovered immune cell linked to type 1 diabetes

In a discovery that might be likened to finding medicine’s version of the Loch Ness monster, a research team from Johns Hopkins Medicine, IBM Research and four collaborating institutions is the first to document the existence of long-doubted “X cell,” a “rogue hybrid” immune system cell that may play a key role in the development […]

Health Problems

Immune find could aid stem cell therapy quest

A discovery of how stem cells are protected from viruses could inform the development of therapies for use in medicine, research suggests. The finding could help research aimed at boosting the immune response of stem cells—early stage cells with the potential to become specialised tissues—for use in treating disease or damaged tissues. The research identified […]

Health News

In rare cases, immune system fails despite HIV suppression

Antiretroviral therapy (ART) is usually very effective at suppressing HIV in the body, allowing a person’s immune system to recover by preventing the virus from destroying CD4+ T cells. Scientists have now identified a rare, paradoxical response to ART known as extreme immune decline, or EXID. Five individuals evaluated at the National Institute of Allergy […]

Health Problems

FDA-approved drug effectively treats rare chronic immune disorders

A drug approved to treat a severe form of asthma dramatically improved the health of people with rare chronic immune disorders called hypereosinophilic syndromes (HES) in whom other treatments were ineffective or intolerable. This finding comes from a small clinical trial led by scientists at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part […]