January 27th, 2012 
admin Enabling Better Immune System Control
While the previous two areas of research have attempted to improve the effectiveness of the immune system in attacking foreign invaders, sometimes the immune system is actually more active than it should be. In autoimmune diseases, the immune system has incorrectly learned that some tissue is “foreign” and as a result, immune cells attack the tissues of the body. This results in tissue damage and chronic inflammation that is bad for overall health.
To prevent this from occurring, researchers from the University of Copenhagen identified a protein that is responsible for controlling the intensity of immune reactions. By creating a vaccine containing the protein, the researchers were able to significantly reduce the level of autoimmune reaction in the body without affecting normal immune reactions.
What the scientists found is that the protein caused specific immune regulating cells to become more sensitive to overreacting white blood cells. When the regulating cells detected chronic inflammation caused by the white blood cells, they actually instructed the white blood cells causing the inflammation to die. The result was that the vaccine could actually calm the immune system.
Conclusions
For the most part, our immune systems are very effective in keeping unwanted visitors from staying very long. Unfortunately, sometimes our immune systems are not as effective as they could be resulting in infection and illness. With the exception of vaccines, medical science has generally worked to create medications that handle infections when our bodies are unable, effectively ignoring the potential power of the immune system. More recent research, however, is using a better understanding of immunity to harness the power of our immune systems with the goal of improving our chances against all the bad bugs that would seek to do us harm.
Related Links
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v470/n7335/full/nature09737.html
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/329/5987/85.short
http://www.bric.ku.dk/newslist/news/vaccine_boosts_your_immune_system/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3007151/
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