Infectious Disease: Tackling Innate Immunity

Innate Immunity and Cardiometabolic Disease

Innate Immunity and Cardiometabolic Disease Innate immunity, an ancient form of host defense, is the body’s rapid, first-line response to environmental threats, such as microbial infection. In contrast to the adaptive immune system—which is present only in higher-order vertebrates, and mediated primarily by somatically generated receptors—the innate immune system relies inherently on basic dete...

Vitamin D signaling, infectious diseases, and regulation of innate immunity.

Vitamin D was first identified as a cure for nutritional rickets, a disease of bone growth caused by an inadequate uptake of dietary calcium. It is now known that vitamin D can be obtained through two independent pathways: limited dietary sources and the photochemical action of solar UV light in the skin. Cod liver oil was discovered to be an excellent source of antirachitic activity in 1827, a...

New Biomarkers of Innate and Adaptive Immunity in Infectious Diseases

Infectious Agents as Stimuli of Trained Innate Immunity

The discoveries made over the past few years have modified the current immunological paradigm. It turns out that innate immunity cells can mount some kind of immunological memory, similar to that observed in the acquired immunity and corresponding to the defense mechanisms of lower organisms, which increases their resistance to reinfection. This phenomenon is termed trained innate immunity. It ...

Effects of Prolactin on Innate Immunity of Infectious Diseases

Prolactin (PRL) hormone has been considered as a cytokine able to modulate immune response in mammals. In addition, particular effects of this hormone on inflammatory response have been documented in autoimmune diseases, whereas its effects on innate immune response during infectious diseases are in general, unknown. The objective of this review is to present the state of art in the role of PRL...