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Australian researchers have uncovered a potential new way toregulate the body's natural immune response, offering hope of asimple and effective treatment for auto-immune diseases. Auto-immune diseases result from an overactive immune response thatcauses the body to attack itself. The new approach involves increasing good regulating cells in thebody, unlike most current research which focuses on stopping "bad"or "effector" cells, says lead researcher Dr Suzanne Hodgkinson,from UNSW's Faculty of Medicine and Liverpool Hospital. The researchers induced the body's T-cell front-line defences byinjecting cell-signalling proteins called cytokines, in particularcytokine Interleukin-5 (II-5 cytokine). When T-regulatory cells are grown in a way to make them specific toa particular protein they develop receptors for the Il-5 cytokine.The Il-5 cytokine boost allows the body's immune system to betterregulate its response to disease without going into overdrive. The team cloned II-5 cytokine and injected it into rats with theneurological condition Guillain-"Barr syndrome. These ratsrecovered much quicker and, if treated as a precaution, did notfall ill. The method has also shown promise in animals with multiple sclerosis , with kidney disease nephritis and trying to overcome organtransplantation rejection. "One of the nice things about this discovery is that it is one ofthe few treatments in the auto-immune world and in thetransplantation world that works not by attacking the effectorcells, but by increasing the good regulating cells. So it works ina very different way from almost every other treatment we've gotavailable," Dr Hodgkinson says. Il-5 injections could be more palatable than inoculation byparasitic worms - another approach in regulating auto-immuneconditions, the researchers say. International research shows swallowing helminths parasites canregulate the immune system and boost T-cell production to combatillnesses such as celiac disease and multiple sclerosis. The absence of the worms in guts in thedeveloped world has been cited as a possible cause for the sharprise in auto-immune diseases in Western nations. "The process we've developed may be the same process that thehelminths kick off. When you get a helminths infestation, one ofthe changes in your immune response is an increase in cells calledeosinophils and these cells make the cytokine Interleukin-5," DrHodgkinson says. "In this new treatment, it's a matter of injecting theinterleukin-5 and the body does the rest. It's both safe andeffective and we think inducing the immune response by injectionmay be more attractive to people than swallowing parasitic worms." The next step is to take the treatment to human trials, which couldbe underway within two to five years, says Dr Hodgkinson, whosepaper outlining the study has been published in the journal Blood. Additional References Citations. We are high quality suppliers, our products such as Decorative String Lights Manufacturer , LED Icicle Light for oversee buyer. To know more, please visits 5050 Strip Light.
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