Category Health/Medical

As people across the globe look forward to longer life expectancies, malignant cancers continue to pose threats to human health. The exploration and development of immunotherapy aims to seek new breakthroughs for the treatment of solid tumours.

The successful establishment of anti-tumour immunity requires the activation, expansion and differentiation of antigen-specific lymphocytes. This process largely depends on specific interactions between various T cells and antigen-presenting cells (APCs) in the body. However, existing tumour vaccines, such as neoantigen vaccines and various vector vaccines, all rely on random interactions with APCs in the body...

Study offers a new approach in the care of allergy sufferers. Micronutrient deficiencies can promote inflammation and render the immune system particularly sensitive to allergenic substances. In particular, iron deficiency signals danger to immune cells and leads to a more pronounced, exaggerated immune response. For the first time, scientists at the Messerli Research Institute of MedUni Vienna, Vetmeduni Vienna and the University of Vienna conducted a placebo-controlled trial and showed that targeted dietary measures can reduce the symptom burden in allergic reactions. The researchers are therefore treading a completely new path in the care of allergy sufferers. The study was recently published in The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology: In Practice.

The background to the s...

Poor sleep is associated with a significantly increased risk of life-threatening flare-ups in people withchronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD, according to a new study supported by the National Institutes of Health. The risk for these flare-ups – sudden bouts of worsening breathing – was 25% to 95% higher in people who experienced poor sleep than in people who had good quality sleep. The findings suggest that poor sleep may be a better predictor of flare-ups than even a person’s history of smoking.

The observational study, one of the largest to look at the links between sleep quality and COPD flare-ups, was largely funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), part of the NIH. Its findings appear online on June 6 in the journal SLEEP.

COPD, a progres...

Researchers have found that some people with schizophrenia have autoantibodies — which are made by the immune system and recognize the body’s own proteins, rather than outside threats such as viruses or bacteria — against NCAM1, a protein that’s importa.nt for communication between brain cells. The patients’ autoantibodies also caused schizophrenia-related behaviors in mice. These findings may improve the diagnosis and treatment of a subset of patients with schizophrenia.

Schizophrenia is a disorder that affects how people act, think, and perceive reality...