A component of the human interferon system that activates SARS-CoV-2 cellular defenses appears to be defective in a proportion of humans, new research reports. COVID-19 outcomes were more severe in ...

Researchers across the planet are racing to harness one of our immune system’s front-line defenders as an early treatment for COVID-19, the disease caused by coronavirus that has killed more than ...

Researchers have discovered that Type I interferon (IFN) plays a key role in helping the immune system effectively target viruses, while stopping white blood cells from 'going rogue' and attacking the ...

Bonn, November 8, 2022 - The innate immune system fights infectious agents. The alarm messenger interferon plays a central role in this. However, if it is produced in the absence of an infection, it ...

The paper E.N. Judd et al., “Positive natural selection in primate genes of the type I interferon response,” BMC Ecol Evol, 21:65, 2021. In humans, one of the host cell’s first lines of defense ...

These intercellular messages, ferried about by molecules called interferons, serve as a warning signal to nearby cells—“‘You are about to be infected; it’s time for you to set up an antiviral state,’” ...

The immune system uses a special mechanism to protect children from novel viruses—and it typically saves them from a severe course of COVID-19 in two different ways. In the mucous membranes of their ...

When pathogens attack the body, the innate immune system goes to work protecting against the invading disease. The innate immune system is the first line of defense. It detects precisely what the ...

Multiple system atrophy is a rare and fatal neurodegenerative disease, where insoluble inclusions of the protein alpha-synuclein appear in oligodendrocyte cells of the brain. The resulting ...