http://medicalxpress.com/ en-us Medical Xpress internet news portal provides the latest news on Health and Medicine. A new report suggests that the concentration of one human cytokine, interleukin 7 (IL-7), in the semen of HIV-1-infected men may be a key determinant of the efficiency of HIV-1 transmission to an uninfected female partner. In their study published February 7 in the Open Access journal PLOS Pathogens, a research group from the Eunice Kennedy-Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) led by Leonid Margolis report that the increased IL-7 concentration in semen facilitates HIV transmission to cervical tissue ex vivo. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-02-hiv-exploits-human-cytokine-semen.html HIV & AIDS Thu, 07 Feb 2013 17:00:03 EST news279466658 Symptoms of an autoimmune disease disappeared after a team of scientists retrained the white blood cells. This method is extremely promising for treating diseases such as type I diabetes and multiple sclerosis. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-12-autoimmune-diseaseretraining-white-blood-cells.html Immunology Mon, 17 Dec 2012 15:00:13 EST news274961600 A research team led by Children's National Medical Center has identified a trigger that causes latent Kaposi's sarcoma-associated herpesvirus (KSHV) to rapidly replicate itself. KSHV causes Kaposi's sarcoma, primary effusion lymphoma, and other cancers that commonly affect immunocompromised patients, including those with AIDS. Appearing in the online edition of the Journal of Virology, the study identifies apoptosis, or the programmed death of a virus' host cell, as the trigger for high-level viral replication. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-04-trigger-alternate-reproduction-hiv-related-cancer.html Cancer Tue, 17 Apr 2012 11:30:04 EST news253880290 A human genetic variant associated with an almost 30 percent reduced risk of developing severe malaria has been identified. Scientists from the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine (BNITM), Hamburg, and Kumasi University, Ghana, reveal that a variant at the FAS locus can prevent an excessive and potentially hazardous immune response in infected children. The study appears in the open-access journal PLoS Genetics on May 19. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-05-malaria-genetic-predisposition-cell-suicide.html Genetics Thu, 19 May 2011 17:33:28 EST news225045169