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Allergy and immunology news

Eating more eggs and peanuts while pregnant does not prevent infant allergies, clinical trial finds

Millions of people around the globe might never know the taste of a PB&J sandwich or crème brûlée because of severe peanut and egg allergies. For a long time, avoiding exposure to allergy-causing foods early in life was considered ...

How a single viral protein hijacks immune cells to supercharge COVID-19 infection

In the sickest COVID-19 patients, SARS-CoV-2 doesn't just cause severe damage by directly infecting airway cells. The virus can also trigger hyperinflammation—a cycle in which immune cells themselves become infected, stop ...

B cells may help predict risk of colitis from immunotherapy

Researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center have identified a previously unknown role for B cells, adaptive immune cells, in triggering and sustaining colitis as a side effect of immune checkpoint inhibitors, ...

Teaching the immune system to control HIV

There is no cure for HIV. While scientists have made considerable progress in controlling the infection, patients still must take daily antiretroviral medication for the rest of their lives. Results from a clinical trial ...

Big data analysis sheds light on psoriasis's genetic code

A research team from South Korea has revealed the specific mechanisms behind the onset of psoriasis by combining large-scale genomic data from more than 1.1 million people with advanced single-cell analysis technology. The ...

Modified BCG vaccine strengthens protection against TB

Researchers from the Centenary Institute and the University of Sydney have developed a modified version of the tuberculosis (TB) vaccine BCG that provided stronger and more sustained protection against TB. In preclinical ...

Newly found 'immune organ' inside skull directs brain defense

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have discovered lymph node-like structures in the skull bone marrow of mice for the first time and demonstrated that they act as rapid first responders ...

Does your immune system learn like AI?

Could AI hold the key to answering questions that have stumped doctors and scientists for decades? A recent study at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) borrows concepts from machine learning to address an age-old riddle ...

An immune defect that may set Crohn's disease in motion

Crohn's disease, a condition characterized by widespread inflammation in the gut, may arise from a weakened immune response, according to new research from the University of Toronto's Temerty Faculty of Medicine.

New approach opens rare immune cells to genetic risk research

Much of how genetic risk leads to disease has remained hidden. In many cases, genetic variants linked to disease do not act on nearby genes along the chromosome. Instead, they influence genes located far away along the DNA ...

Finding a tumor's soft spot to power-up immunotherapy

Researchers at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering and Keck School of Medicine of USC have engineered a genetic tool that addresses one of the most persistent obstacles in cancer immunotherapy: the physical softness of ...