The itchiness of hives or urticaria can severely affect people’s quality of life, particularly if symptoms last or antihistamines don’t work.
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Hives are incredibly common and most people find antihistamines help relieve this itchy skin rash. But for some, hives persist, so they have to try other treatments.
A schoolteacher in the midst of receiving a full pe'a, the traditional Samoan tattoo generally worn by males.
Christopher Lynn
An anthropologist works in American Samoa, taking advantage of the island’s longstanding tattoo culture to tease out the effects tattoos have on the body’s immune function.
Bacteriophages are viruses that attack and infect bacteria.
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While some viruses make us sick, others can fight against bacteria, or protect us from more harmful viruses.
If you’re going overseas with your little one, you can vaccinate them against measles early. But they’ll still need their regular jab when they turn one.
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Babies are normally vaccinated against measles at 12 months old. But doctors are now suggesting having the shot as early as six months might be worthwhile for youngsters traveling overseas.
Are you exhausted? Your immune cells might be too.
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Joanna Groom, WEHI (Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research)
The cornerstone of our adaptive immune system is the ability to remember the various infections we have encountered. Quite literally, if it doesn’t kill you, it makes your immune system stronger.
Sometimes statistical analysis suggests a result is significant – but actually in real life it means very little.
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Nicholas Huntington, WEHI (Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research)
Immunotherapy drugs work by increasing the patient’s own immune response. The most successful examples of immunotherapies are drugs that act as antibodies, of which Keytruda is one.
Could the yearly flu shot become a thing of the past?
AP Photo/Darron Cummings, File
Flu virus mutates so quickly that one year’s vaccine won’t work on the next year’s common strains. But rational design – a new way to create vaccines – might pave the way for more lasting solutions.
Waluh, a one-day-old male baby pygmy hippopotamus (Cheropsis libereensis), swims with his mother.
REUTERS/Dwi Oblo
Flu virus mutates so quickly that one year’s vaccine won’t work on the next year’s common strains. But a new way to create vaccines, called ‘rational design,’ might pave the way for more lasting solutions.
HIV plays hide and seek with the body’s immune system to evade detection. But we can learn from its tactics to make a range of vaccines against infectious diseases.
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Public health experts enlist the molecular biology tools that create genetically modified organisms – as well as the GMOs themselves – in the fight against emerging infectious diseases.
The climate is startlingly complex, as is the immune system.
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The immune system does such a good job most of the time that we only really think about it when things go wrong. But to provide such excellent protection, it must constantly learn.
‘Leaky vaccines’ don’t affect the ability of the virus to reproduce and spread to others; they simply prevent it from causing disease.
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Antibiotic resistant bacteria are becoming a major problem. Calls to action on increasing rates of resistance have been made by the World Health Organization, the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC…
Too much urging can backfire and entrench some parents’ opposition to vaccination.
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Dr Seuss’ book Green Eggs and Ham is built around the urgings of a weird creature, Sam I Am, who insists the narrator eat the food of its title. When the narrator refuses, Sam issues an ever-widening range…
Motherhood has made women’s immune systems stronger.
Wendkuni
Research published in this month’s BioEssays confirms something many of us have always known: women have stronger immune systems than men. We fight off infections more readily, are less likely to develop…