D URING the past twenty years, it has come to be realized that antibodies are produced in a cell complex which has become popularly known by the rather unwieldy term of “immunologically competent cells.” This complex consists not only of reticulum cells, which were the first to be generally considered as antibody producers, but of lymphocytes and plasmocytes as well. The role of the plasmocyte ...

Background. Recently, on the example of two cohort patients, we found that disturbances geomagnetic field cause a significant immediate modulating effect level immune parameters in blood. The data available literature give grounds for assumptions about direct immunocytes, and indirectly, through immunotropic neurotransmitters hormones. Our hypothesis is as follows. Disturbances are perceived by...

CD4+ regulatory (Treg) T cells play a central role in the immune system by potently controlling the responses of other immunocytes. Their activity appears to be essential not only for themaintenanceof immunological self-tolerancebut potentially also for the control of all physiological immune responses whether against normal self-proteins, microbes or cancerous cells. A fuller understanding of ...

Although the fetal lamb is unable to form circulating antiovalbumin antibodies until about 120 days of gestation, ovalbumin-specific helper T cells can be stimulated to function at an earlier age. This would suggest that the critical event responsible for the precise sequential maturation of immunologic competence to different antigens at different developmental stages is not the first appearan...

The therapeutic benefits of adrenocorticotropic hormone in multiple sclerosis are usually ascribed to its corticotropic actions. Evidence is presented that adrenocorticotropic hormone, approved for multiple sclerosis relapses, acts via corticosteroid-independent melanocortin pathways to engender down-modulating actions on immune-system cells and the cytokines they synthesize. Immune response-da...

The immune system neither discriminates between "Self" and "Nonself", nor it acts when confronting "Danger", rather, it reacts to disruption of tissue integrity allowing its renewal. The "integrity" hypothesis proposes three groups of signals that coordinate actions of dendritic cells and immunocytes during the initiation of the specific immune response, and suggests explanations for tolerance,...