Immune System

Coughing is one of the most obvious and indisputable signs of human illness. In addition to being the main cause for patient visits to doctors, over a billion dollars are spent each year on over-the-counter (OTC) cough remedies in the US.

Scientists are trying to unravel a medical mystery involving a new type of coronavirus, which come from that same large family of viruses that...

Exposure to school-age children raises the odds that a person with lung disease who catches a cold will actually suffer symptoms like a runny...

Why do some folks who take every precaution still get the flu, while others never even get the sniffles? It comes down to a person's...

In a new Mayo Clinic study, researchers found that more than one-third of chronic cough patients given a CT scan had sinusitis, inflammation of the sinuses. Findings will be presented at the American College of Chest Physicians CHEST 2005 meeting in Montreal. "This study suggests that sinusitis is more common than...

Rice University researchers have settled a long-standing controversy over the mechanism by which silver nanoparticles, the most widely used nanomaterial in the world, kill bacteria. Their work comes with a Nietzsche-esque warning: Use enough. If you don't kill them, you make them stronger.

Throughout the interior spaces of humans and other warm-blooded creatures is a special type of tissue known as brown fat, which may hold the secret to diets and weight-loss programs of the future.

A preliminary study by a New Zealand company, Plant & Food Research,* shows that natural chemicals from blackcurrants may help breathing in some types of asthma. Researchers found a compound from a New Zealand blackcurrant may reduce lung inflammation with a multi-action assault in allergy-induced asthma.

Despite a name straight from a Tarantino movie, natural killer (NK) cells are your allies when it comes to fighting infections and cancer. If...

Bacteria can talk to each other via molecules they themselves produce. The phenomenon is called quorum sensing, and is important when an infection propagates. Now, researchers at Linköping University in Sweden are showing how bacteria control processes in human cells the same way.

A new way to fight inflammation uses molecules called polymers to mop up the debris of damaged cells before the immune system becomes abnormally...

Canadian researchers have discovered a new way the body combats respiratory viral infections. In the journal PLoS Pathogens, scientists from the University of Montreal and the University of Montreal Hospital Research Center explain how the NOX2 molecule, an enzyme that...