immune response

A mouse study points to a possible mechanism by which the smallpox vaccine helped eradicate the disease in the 1980s.

The virus’s ability to slip directly from one cell to another may help it avoid some of the body’s immune responses.

A study that transfused plasma from active to inactive mice suggests the protein clusterin enhances cognition.

If the immune system makes mistakes—reacting late or getting the target wrong—it can amplify the damage wrought by SARS-CoV-2.

President Biden’s planned rollout of additional COVID-19 vaccine doses is set to begin next week, but questions remain about who should get them.

More than a dozen vaccines for tuberculosis are currently being tested in clinical trials. Some use whole bacteria as BCG does, while others deliver protein subunits or genetic material carried by viral vectors.  

This month marks the 100-year anniversary of BCG, still the only approved vaccine against the lethal pathogen. But there are new vaccines for this wily foe on the horizon.

Researchers at Imperial College London and the University of Oxford are exposing healthy volunteers to SARS-CoV-2 for science.

By avoiding the production of antibodies, something vaccines ordinarily induce, the immunization sidesteps the problem of antibody-dependent enhancement, which can amplify infection by a similar virus and is known to occur with dengue and Zika.

A study of people in Sierra Leone suggests that the virus can lie in hiding from the immune system before re-emerging later and sparking a new response—although researchers didn’t examine whether this could make people infectious again.

A recent study elucidates some of the changes that occur in the body after inoculation with a tuberculosis vaccine.

A meta-analysis of seven randomized controlled trials concludes that dexamethasone and other corticosteroids reduce 28-day mortality in seriously ill patients.

When mice that had suffered a stroke were given blood from a healthy donor, they experienced less tissue and neurological damage.

Increases in the levels of three cytokines are among the features linked to poor outcomes.