Immune System

A new study showing an estimated 7% of American teens and adults carry the human papillomavirus in their mouths may help health experts finally understand why rates of mouth and throat cancer have been climbing for nearly 25 years. The evidence makes it clear that oral sex practices play a key role in transmission. The new data, published online Thursday by the Journal of the American Medical Assn., are the first to assess the prevalence of oral HPV infection in the U.S. population.

Allergy season came early this year. Unprecedented warmth this winter caused plants to begin blooming earlier than normal, flooding the air with pollen and triggering fits of sneezing, runny noses, itches and rashes. Scientists have struggled for decades to understand why humans suffer such nasty allergic reactions and why the incidence of allergies -- such as to peanuts -- seems to be increasing almost exponentially. There still is no good answer, but Yale researchers suggested Wednesday that allergies may be an outgrowth of the way our body protects us from noxious substances in the environment.

The study of how bodies develop immunities has become important to every medical speciality and additional courses in the field are needed in medical schools, physicians urged in a recent report in the Journal of the American Medical Assn. "The future holds great promise for the allergy and clinical immunology," wrote Dr. John E. Salvaggio of Tulane University School of Medicine in New Orleans and Dr. K. Frank Austen of the Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston.

An experimental drug called ONO-4641 reduced the number of lesions in patients with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis by as much as 92%, Colorado researchers reported Tuesday. The drug must undergo a larger clinical trial before it can be approved for general use, but the early results suggest it could be a major new addition to the slowly growing armamentarium against the cruel disease. MS is an autoimmune disease in which the body's immune system attacks the myelin that surrounds and insulate nerves, effectively short-circuiting them and making movements difficult.

If you want to live longer -- avoid heart disease, Alzheimer's disease and cancer -- then pick and choose your foods with care to quiet down parts of your immune system. That's the principle promoted by the founders and followers of anti-inflammatory diets, designed to reduce chronic inflammation in the body. Dozens of books filled with diets and recipes have flooded the market in the last few years, including popular ones by dermatologist Dr. Nicholas Perricone and Zone Diet creator Barry Sears.

A tangy, sour, fermented milk drink may not sound like a likely candidate to move from health food stores to mainstream supermarkets, but that's exactly what kefir has done. The beverage is steadily gaining fans convinced of the health benefits -- proponents tout its purported ability to help cure cancer, reduce high cholesterol and treat high blood pressure -- yet the scientific studies to support the claims are still few. Kefir's closest cousin is yogurt, also made by fermenting milk with bacteria.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney's heart transplant Saturday at Inova Fairfox Hospital in Virgina highlights the fact that, while such operations may offer patients a new lease on life, they come with their own set of complications. "It's a long haul," said Dr. Eric Topol, a cardiologist who serves as director of the Scripps Translational Science Institute. "The first few days is basically like healing from an open-heart operation … so mainly he would have a lot of discomfort in his chest wall.

For more than 100 years, medical literature has contained reports of a debilitating illness that causes prolonged fatigue, memory loss, headaches, cognitive problems and issues with digestion and sleep. Teddy Roosevelt, John Muir and Thomas Eakins all suffered from what was then known as neurasthenia. At that time, the recommended treatment for women was bed rest; men were advised to head to the Wild West. But neither treatment could be counted on to cure the disease. Toward the end of the 20th century, doctors came up with the term chronic fatigue syndrome (or, in Europe, myalgic encephalomyelitis)

An unfortunate legacy of pregnancy seems to leave women more vulnerable than men to dangerous and disabling autoimmune disorders, including diabetes and multiple sclerosis, scientists report. In a symposium concerning the self-destructive illnesses--held here earlier this month during the annual meeting of the American Assn.

Devotees of massage therapy know it's relaxing and feels good. But massage may also be an effective tool for maintaining good health. Researchers from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center reported this week that a single massage produced measurable changes in the immune system and endocrine system of healthy adults. The researchers, led by Dr. Mark Rapaport, studied 29 healthy adults who received a 45-minute Swedish massage and 24 healthy adults who had a 45-minute session of light touch massage, a much milder exercise that served as a comparison to the more vigorous Swedish massage.

Blocking "don't destroy me" signals that normally sit on the surface of tumor cells and render them resistant to immune-cell attack slows the growth of a broad range of human cancers when they're implanted in mice, researchers have found. The approach, reported by immunologists at the Stanford University School of Medicine, was effective against ovarian, breast, colon, bladder, liver, prostate and brain cancer cells. If the work can be repeated in people, the approach may someday help doctors marshal defender cells in patients' own bodies to fight cancers, the researchers said.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney's heart transplant Saturday at Inova Fairfox Hospital in Virgina highlights the fact that, while such operations may offer patients a new lease on life, they come with their own set of complications. "It's a long haul," said Dr. Eric Topol, a cardiologist who serves as director of the Scripps Translational Science Institute. "The first few days is basically like healing from an open-heart operation … so mainly he would have a lot of discomfort in his chest wall.

Exposure to perfluorinated compounds, or PFCs, a class of chemical used in food packaging and textiles, was associated with a lowered immune response to the tetanus and diphtheria vaccines in 5- to 7-year-olds in the Faroe Islands, researchers reported Tuesday in the journal JAMA. The scientists followed close to 600 children from the islands, which are in the Norwegian Sea north of Scotland and are a self-governing part of the Kingdom of Denmark, because people there eat a lot of seafood.  A marine-based diet is associated with increased exposures to PFCs, according to background information in the JAMA report.

The death of rapper Heavy D on Tuesday still has fans in shock as they wonder what felled the 44-year-old star. Though the cause of death may not be known for weeks, L.A. Now reports that an L.A. County coroner's office spokesman said a doctor had prescribed the rapper a drug due to a cough. Heavy D was also having breathing problems at his home before collapsing, and there is speculation that the rapper was experiencing flu-like symptoms or pneumonia. Some studies have shown a link between obesity and a higher risk of pneumonia.

The Nobel Prize in medicine was awarded Monday for key discoveries on the immune system. However, one of the three recipients died Friday of pancreatic cancer -- after the Nobel Committee had reached its decision but before announcing it. Nobel prizes are not given posthumously. Thus, the death of Dr. Ralph Steinman, 68, of Rockefeller University in New York, complicates the Nobel Foundation's decision. It's not yet clear how the foundation will proceed. Steinman joined Dr. Bruce A. Beutler, of the University of Texas' Southwestern Medical Center, and Jules A. Hoffmann, of Strasbourgh University in France, as the 2011 winners for their various advances in understanding the workings of the immune system.

For more than 100 years, medical literature has contained reports of a debilitating illness that causes prolonged fatigue, memory loss, headaches, cognitive problems and issues with digestion and sleep. Teddy Roosevelt, John Muir and Thomas Eakins all suffered from what was then known as neurasthenia. At that time, the recommended treatment for women was bed rest; men were advised to head to the Wild West. But neither treatment could be counted on to cure the disease. Toward the end of the 20th century, doctors came up with the term chronic fatigue syndrome (or, in Europe, myalgic encephalomyelitis)

HERE'S A new wrinkle in the old anti-aging game. Riding the Zeitgeist of the popular line-diminishing acne drug Retin-A, small cosmetics manufacturers are emphasizing the prescription-druglike ingredients in their products. Dozens of multimillion-dollar cosmetics firms such as Lancome and Revlon were forced to stop making anti-aging promises last year after the U.S.

Doctors have overcome 30 years of false starts and found success with a new way to fight cancer: using the body's natural defender, the immune system. The approach is called a cancer vaccine, although it treats the disease rather than prevents it. Researchers at a cancer conference in Orlando said Sunday that one such vaccine kept a common form of lymphoma from worsening for more than a year.

Dr. Baruj Benacerraf, who shared the 1980 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for his pioneering work explaining why some people are able to fight off infections and tumors while others are not, died Tuesday at his Boston home. He was 90. The cause was pneumonia, according to the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, where he spent most of his career. "Dr. Benacerraf's seminal discoveries about genetic control of the immune system made possible much of what we now know about basic disease processes such as infection, autoimmune disorders and cancer," Dr. Edward J. Benz Jr., president of Dana-Farber, said in a statement.