After his best friend from high school had a daughter with Down syndrome, immunologist Dusan Bogunovic of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York pored over decades of research to better understand the condition. As he read through the literature, he began to notice overlaps between Down syndrome and more severe genetic disorders that stem from over-producing interferons—molecules that open the innate immune system’s floodgates by activating hundreds of genes that guard against viral infections and trigger inflammation to curb disease after an infection occurs.
Now, about six years later, Bogunovic and colleagues report evidence that a hypersensitivity to interferons, specifically those classified as type I, may paradoxically blunt responses to those signaling molecules after infection, causing an immunosuppressed state that can let inflammation run rampant. The findings, published today (October 14) in Immunity, may help explain why viruses tend to infect people with Down syndrome ...
