Jonathan Lambert
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
In two very small studies published in the journal Nature, the approach showed promise.
Several patients kept the virus controlled for months and even over a year without medication.
Crucially, the researchers homed in on the immune cells responsible, called CD8 T-cells.
Knowing this could make it much easier to eventually develop a cure.
There are two main ideas for how fevers fight infection.
One is that the high temperature is itself the point and helps cook off the virus by messing with its ability to hijack our cells.
The other is that high temperatures somehow help our immune system work better.
New research in the journal Science suggests that it's the heat that counts, at least in mice.
Lab mice just so happen to not get feverish when infected with the flu.
So to study this question, researchers infected mice and turned up the heat.
Mice housed at room temperature got sick after infection.
But those housed in conditions simulating a fever fared much better, suggesting that the heat helped them fight the flu.
Antibiotic resistance happens when bacteria evolve to work around existing drugs, and it's on the rise worldwide.
Major knowledge gaps about what antibiotics can and can't do could be contributing to that rise, according to a study published recently in Clinical Microbiology and Infection.
Researchers analyzed over 200 studies from dozens of countries that asked people about antibiotics.
Globally, roughly three-quarters of people knew that the drugs are effective against bacterial infections, but less than half knew that antibiotics don't work against viral colds or flu.
Understanding was much lower in some countries, including Myanmar and Bangladesh.
Those knowledge gaps could mean more people take antibiotics when they aren't warranted, which can stoke the spread of resistance.