Health News

Immune system targets vitamin B12 pathway to neutralize bacteria

Close to 1.8 billion people worldwide are infected with Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), the common and occasionally deadly bacterium that causes millions of cases of tuberculosis each year. The bacteria, having coevolved with humans over millennia, have devised ways of hijacking nutrients from its human host for its own benefit. Humans have equally complex ways of […]

Health Problems

Five scientists honored for cancer therapy, immune system work

Five scientists have won prestigious medical awards for creating an innovative breast cancer treatment and discovering key players of the disease-fighting immune system. They will share two $250,000 awards from the Lasker Foundation, to be presented later this month in New York, the foundation announced Tuesday. One prize honors the invention of Herceptin, a breast […]

Health Problems

First step to induce self-repair in the central nervous system

Damaged peripheral nerves can regenerate after an injury, for example, following a forearm fracture. Axons, the long projections of neurons that transmit stimuli or signals to other cells, are affected in the case of injury and need to regrow to recover their function. The research team led by Prof. Claire Jacob at Johannes Gutenberg University […]

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

A new approach to peripheral nerve injury? Natural killer cells in the immune system could present a target

In animal models of a totally crushed peripheral nerve, the damaged axons are broken down, allowing healthy ones to regrow. But humans rarely suffer complete axonal damage. Instead, axons tend to be partially damaged, causing neuropathic pain—a difficult-to-treat, chronic pain associated with nerve trauma, chemotherapy and diabetes. A new study in Cell, led by Michael […]

Health News

Wait Times Have Improved in VA Health Care System

FRIDAY, Jan. 18, 2019 — From 2014 to 2017, there were improvements in wait times in the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) health care system, resulting in reduced wait times versus the private sector (PS) in 2017, according to a study published online Jan. 18 in JAMA Network Open. Madeline Penn, from the Department of […]