Alzheimer’s brains are in a constant state of inflammation. But why doesn’t that inflammation switch off on its own?
Wet macular degeneration is one of the most common causes of blindness in older age.
In Alzheimer’s disease, the brain’s immune system stays permanently switched on. Researchers at Scripps Research have now identified the protein responsible and, for the first time, explained exactly why it gets stuck…
Your immune system can learn from an infection and respond faster next time. That sounds helpful. But in chronic gut inflammation, the same mechanism can make the disease worse.
Much of the twentieth century’s gains in life expectancy came from controlling infectious disease. But even people who survived infections didn’t escape unscathed.
The brain has its own immune cells that are supposed to clean up toxic debris, including the protein clumps linked to Alzheimer’s disease. With age, they become less effective.
Sepsis is one of the deadliest complications of severe infection, especially in older adults.
People with certain cancer-linked gene mutations sometimes respond better to immunotherapy. New research explains why: faults in two well-known genes dramatically alter the environment surrounding a tumour.
Organised clusters of immune cells inside tumours follow the same structural pattern across dozens of cancer types. That is the headline finding of a large-scale spatial atlas of tumour immunity.
CBD is best known for easing pain or anxiety. But new research in mice suggests it may also suppress inflammation in the brain.
When the immune system detects a threat, B cells do not just produce antibodies. They also completely restructure their metabolism.
Microglia, the immune cells of the brain, do more than clear damage. They also control hormone production through a specific receptor in the hypothalamus.
Men and women do not age the same way. The immune system follows different decline trajectories in each sex.
Tuberculosis still kills more than a million people every year. Older adults are far more likely to die from it than younger people.
Most cancer immunotherapies work only for a minority of patients. A new mRNA treatment drastically increased immune responses in mice. It also boosted responses to flu and COVID-19.
Neutrophils are the most abundant white blood cells in the human body. They survive for only hours to days.
Aged skin heals poorly. But a toxic bacterial substance, given before an injury occurs, makes that skin noticeably better at recovering afterward. It sounds paradoxical, and it is.
Not all RNA in the cell makes proteins. Much of it stays untranslated and regulates other genes instead.
A dietary amino acid shapes gut barrier function and immune regulation through a microbial pathway that has only recently been mapped in detail. The implications reach well beyond digestion.
Most cardiovascular treatments lower LDL cholesterol or reduce inflammation. A new drug candidate takes a different approach, targeting a toxic cholesterol breakdown product that traps immune cells in artery walls.
The brains of Alzheimer’s patients contain cells with DNA errors not found in healthy brains.
Doctors are increasingly ignoring sepsis detection alerts. Not because they take the condition less seriously, but because the algorithm raises false alarms so often that clinicians have learned to distrust it.
Scientists have engineered nanoparticles capable of activating an immune response across the entire body simultaneously — not just at the site of injection.
The immune system doesn’t stay neatly separate from the brain. As it ages and becomes chronically inflamed, it appears to actively promote dementia and other neurological diseases — a connection that may…
The immune system must constantly calibrate its own reactions. Too little and pathogens win. Too much and the body damages itself.
The weight can come off. But according to a new study in mice, the immune system may hold onto a memory of obesity long after the scales return to normal — keeping…
Every time you fight an infection or respond to a vaccine, your immune system runs a miniature evolutionary competition. The cells that produce better antibodies win and multiply.
People living at high altitude have less oxygen available. That has a surprising consequence: their immune systems appear biologically older than those of people at sea level — even when they seem…
Deep inside the aging liver, a rogue population of immune cells is fueling chronic inflammation and driving disease.
Researchers have identified a molecular switch inside the body’s blood-forming cells that gets triggered by stress and appears to accelerate the aging of the immune system.
Not all ant colonies build at the same pace. New experiments show that the age structure of a colony — how many young versus old workers it contains — directly determines how…
Cancer cells have a way of making themselves invisible to the immune system’s hunters.
A small molecule that blocks one of the body’s central inflammation engines has passed its first clinical test in humans.
Two of the most discussed phenomena in aging research — chronic low-grade inflammation and the biological clock of cells — are more tightly linked than previously understood.
Women tend to mount stronger immune responses than men — but their immune systems also appear to shift more dramatically as they age.
Two of the most discussed processes in aging science — chronic low-grade inflammation and epigenetic changes in DNA — turn out to be closely connected.
AI models that study proteins have a blind spot: they learn from data without understanding how evolution actually works.
What if your immune system could be programmed once and then protect you for life — without ever needing a booster?
Your body can be biologically older or younger than your birth certificate suggests — and a type of inflammation you never feel may be quietly pushing that number up.
Sitting still in intense heat turns out to do something the body normally reserves for physical exertion.
The immune systems of men and women don’t just age at different rates. They age along fundamentally different trajectories — with real consequences for who gets sick, when, and from what.
A single half-hour sauna session is enough to temporarily spike the number of white blood cells circulating in the body.
Hidden inside the livers of people with fatty liver disease is a population of immune cells that have biologically aged — and are fuelling a slow, smouldering inflammation that makes everything worse…
Fever is widely recognized as a defense mechanism, but the precise molecular pathway has remained poorly understood.
Scientists have known for decades that cutting calories extends lifespan in mice.
Tuberculosis kills more people each year than almost any other infectious disease. The bacterium survives by hiding inside the very cells meant to destroy it.
A single half-hour sauna session causes a significant but temporary spike in circulating white blood cells, according to new research.
The same technique that has transformed cancer treatment — reprogramming immune cells to hunt down disease — is now being aimed at Alzheimer’s.
Blood cancer cells cloak themselves in a layer of sugar molecules that tells the immune system to stand down.
Older adults who received a high-dose flu vaccine showed a greater reduction in dementia risk than those who got the standard shot.
The trade in wild animals has been one of the primary routes for new diseases jumping from animals to humans for at least forty years.
Cancer cells are skilled escape artists. But leukemia cells have a particularly elegant trick: they coat themselves in sugar molecules that actively send a stop signal to the immune system.
Older people don’t die from the flu more often simply because they’re frail. They die because their immune system can produce fewer new defenders each year while simultaneously staying locked in a…
Immunity doesn’t age the same way in everyone. A new study of nearly a thousand people reveals that women and men follow fundamentally different immune aging trajectories — with far greater cellular…
Cartilage heals slowly even in young people, but in older age that capacity nearly disappears.
Influenza kills tens of thousands of people every year in the US alone — and many of those deaths aren’t directly from the infection.
Same species, same lifespan pressures — but the immune system ages in strikingly different ways depending on whether you’re female or male.
CAR T-cell therapy transformed blood cancer treatment. But for solid tumors — the most common cancers — it has largely failed.
Bacteria have been fighting viruses for billions of years, and in doing so have evolved a vast and largely unknown arsenal of immune defenses.
Cancer cells burn sugar differently from healthy ones, leaving a distinct chemical trail.
In early 2024, a strain of bird flu turned up in American dairy herds. Since then it has spread across dozens of states, infected a handful of humans, and left researchers with…
Your blood does far more than carry oxygen. A new piece in Science describes how blood components can directly neutralise pathogens and repair damage — without any help from doctors or drugs…
Mitochondria have long been known as the cell’s energy generators. But new research published in Science reveals they also control how effectively your immune system attacks tumors — and that changes everything…
Tuberculosis bacteria survive inside the very immune cells meant to destroy them. Scientists have now identified how: a bacterial protein sneaks into the cell’s nucleus and reprograms the host’s immune response from…
A study of 527 women has mapped how breast tissue changes with age in unprecedented spatial detail: cell density drops, proliferation slows, and inflammatory immune cells take up proportionally more space.
A small organ tucked behind the breastbone, largely ignored after childhood, turns out to be one of the more powerful predictors of mortality.
CAR T-cell therapy is one of the most powerful tools oncology has produced in decades — but its complexity and cost put it out of reach for most patients.
A small organ tucked behind the breastbone, largely ignored after childhood, turns out to be one of the more powerful predictors of mortality.
CAR T-cell therapy is one of the most powerful tools oncology has produced in decades — but its complexity and cost put it out of reach for most patients.
Stress is the most reliable trigger for alcohol relapse. A new study in mice and rats maps the specific neural circuit responsible — and shows how alcohol actively disrupts the very mechanism…