Immune System

The first tentative signs of promise in treating multiple sclerosis with simple oral doses of a common protein have been reported by a research team in Boston.The treatment, aimed at stopping the patients' immune-system cells from attacking their nerve cells, was not dramatically effective, but was encouraging enough to warrant a bigger, more extensive study, the researchers said yesterday. The larger study, involving more than 200 patients, is planned to start this year.The hints of success suggest this approach, called oral tolerization, may eventually be useful in early treatment of other auto-immune diseases, including rheumatoid arthritis, diabetes and an eye disease called uveitis, said neuroimmunologist Howard Weiner.

The first tentative signs of promise in treating multiple sclerosis with simple oral doses of a common protein have been reported by a research team in Boston.The treatment, aimed at stopping the patients' immune-system cells from attacking their nerve cells, was not dramatically effective, but was encouraging enough to warrant a bigger, more extensive study, the researchers said yesterday. The larger study, involving more than 200 patients, is planned to start this year.The hints of success suggest this approach, called oral tolerization, may eventually be useful in early treatment of other auto-immune diseases, including rheumatoid arthritis, diabetes and an eye disease called uveitis, said neuroimmunologist Howard Weiner.

Medical researchers have made a significant advance in understanding multiple sclerosis, a common neurological disease that causes symptoms that include muscle weakness and paralysis. The disease is one in which the body's immune system mistakenly attacks the electrical insulation of nerve fibers. The cause is part genetic and part environmental, but researchers trying to identify the relevant genes have endured repeated frustration. Their approach has been to guess what genes might be involved and see whether patients have abnormal versions.

Scientists at the Johns Hopkins Oncology Center have shown for the first time that an experimental vaccine made from a patient's tumor can spur the immune system to fight his prostate cancer.The vaccine was tested in a group of men who had their prostates surgically removed but whose disease had spread to adjacent lymph nodes. This is the first sign of metastatic prostate cancer, which proves fatal in the vast majority of cases.Dr. Jonathan Simons, who led the study, said that further research will be needed to see whether the vaccine is capable of bringing cancer into remission -- or better yet, of curing the disease.

As a Harvard Medical School student studying immunology in the 1970s, Dr. Curt Civin began wondering how the body's immune system might be used to fight cancer.Today, thanks to the physician's 15-year quest to answer that question, doctors will soon have a commercially available device that helps cancer patients' immune systems recover quickly after the heavy hit that bone-marrow transplants and high doses of chemotherapy deliver to the body.Civin, a child oncologist and the King Fahd Professor of Pediatric Oncology at Johns Hopkins Hospital, will take center stage in Washington tomorrow when he is honored for the invention by the Intellectual Property Owners Association, a nonprofit organization that promotes patent and copyright protections.

Ashley Zink's eyes expressed everything the rest of her body could not. Pain. Fear. Exhaustion. Disappointment.As the Roland Park senior lay in a hospital bed in January almost completely paralyzed by Guillain-Barre syndrome and breathing with the help of a respirator, her hazel eyes became the only quick link to her emotions."

WASHINGTON -- An experimental malaria vaccine achieved limited success in a field trial in West Africa, researchers said yesterday, fueling cautious hopes that people can one day be inoculated against one of the planet's most prolific killers.The vaccine briefly reduced malaria cases by almost two-thirds in a group of volunteers in Gambia last year, researchers said. Scientists disclosed the results yesterday at a meeting of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene here."I think it's a great step forward," said Dr. Philip K. Russell of the Center for Immunization Research at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health.

Keith Elkins Klinger,87, who helped develop the 911 emergency response system during his tenure as a Los Angeles County fire chief, died Feb. 28 in Los Angeles of complications from cancer. As a member of President Richard M. Nixon's Fire Commission, he worked with Bell Laboratories in New York to develop the 911 system.Dr. Hans J. Muller-Eberhard,70, one of the world's leading molecular immunologists, died of cancer Tuesday in Houston. He was one of the first scientists to explain the importance of the complement system, a kind of front line attack for the immune system that is composed of certain proteins in blood plasma.

Researchers at Baltimore's Institute of Human Virology have discovered another way that the virus that causes AIDS cripples the body's immune system.In a paper in this month's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a group of scientists at the institute show, for the first time, how the human immunodeficiency virus can infect and disable an important component of the immune system, so-called "killer" T cells.While the long-term implications of the finding aren't clear, Dr. Robert C. Gallo, director of the institute, said the discovery might lead to improvement in an existing therapy for acquired immune deficiency syndrome.

Women infected with HIV may be at a more advanced stage of infection and at a higher risk of developing AIDS than men with identical results on certain blood tests, researchers are reporting.The researchers suggest that treatment guidelines, used for both sexes even though they are based on research involving only men, should be changed to recommend earlier treatment for women. But other researchers say changing treatment guidelines at this point would be premature.The recommendations are based on a study conducted at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, published today in the British medical journal Lancet.

In a pale yellow room in the Schlesinger home in Arnold, sunlight pours in through two long windows. Avery, 3, is running her neon-colored toy around the edge of the coffee table, making engine noises. Her pink-framed glasses are slipping down her nose, her short brown hair a mess of tangles. She seems unaware that everyone in the room is talking about her. Her father is sitting in an armchair, her mother sinking into an overstuffed couch next to a 23-year-old woman from Germany she met two days ago. In another room, Avery's brother and sister are watching a cartoon, and its sounds flitter in and out of the conversation.

* Dr. Jonathan Schneck, a professor of pathology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, is leading a team of researchers who have been awarded a $10.3 million grant - the largest basic immunology grant ever received by Hopkins - from the National Institutes of Health to dissect the human immune system. The researchers aim to learn more about what happens when the immune system goes wrong, and how to suppress undesired immune responses in the cases of rejected tissue or organ transplants or in autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis or lupus.

She didn't always order the test. For more than two decades in private practice, in fact, Dr. Patricia Czapp almost never checked the vitamin D levels of her patients. Things have certainly changed. "For the last two years, I've been testing virtually all of my patients," said Czapp, a family doctor at Annapolis Primary Care. "The vast majority are straight-out deficient or insufficient. It's frightening to think there's that many people walking around with that deficiency." What doctors are beginning to understand is that vitamin D isn't just important for absorbing calcium and building bones.

The elevator doors open on the fifth floor at Johns Hopkins Hospital, and Peggy Murphy tentatively steps out, as if crossing a threshold in the struggle to stay ahead of her breast cancer. Last fall, she had been accepted into Dr. Leisha Emens' clinical trial testing an experimental breast cancer vaccine, one designed to teach her immune system to attack the tumors that had spread to her right hip. She had been euphoric, given at least a chance to help her live-in grandchildren find the right path in life.

In the nearly 40 years since the nation declared war on cancer, great advances have been made in breast cancer screening, early detection and treatment. The death rate for breast cancers has fallen. More is discovered all the time about the genetics and biology of the disease. But a cure remains elusive. Cancer, which is actually a variety of diseases, changes constantly and can spread throughout the body in ways that can be difficult to detect. Even when stopped in its tracks, it can often adjust and evade treatments that once worked against it. In most cases, the body's immune system learns to go after a foreign invader like a virus or a bacteria.

Mimi suffers from tuberculosis in the opera La Boheme, but in reality, there is little that's romantic about the disease. It is the second-leading cause of death from infection in the world (though not in the United States), says Dr. Richard E. Chaisson, professor of medicine, epidemiology and international health at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and founding director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Tuberculosis Research. Worldwide, the highest number of TB cases and deaths in recorded history will occur this year, according to Hopkins' Department of Medicine Web site.

UM School of Medicine gets $3 million grant The University of Maryland School of Medicine has received a $3 million federal grant to improve tissue-transplant techniques in ways that would benefit soldiers and other victims of trauma. At a news briefing yesterday, Dr. Stephen Bartlett, the chief of surgery, predicted that the hospital would perform its first face transplant in the next two years. The grant will help researchers devise ways to perform those and other grafts without using anti-rejection drugs, which can have serious side effects.

Hoping to strengthen their stressed-out immune systems, many people with cancer join support groups, attend yoga classes or take other steps to lift their moods. Do these mind-body interventions help prolong life? A recent study of 1,093 patients with advanced head and neck cancer suggests they do not. The report, published in October in the journal Cancer, found no difference in life expectancy of patients with a strong sense of emotional well-being compared with those with high levels of emotional distress.

The dumb promises of immunity must have been the last straw. The State Department capped its astonishing record of mismanagement of private security firms in Iraq in a fairly spectacular way, by making an offer of immunity it didn't have the power to grant, to the Blackwater USA guards who were involved in the notorious shoot-'em-up in Baghdad's Nisour Square. Condoleezza Rice has now given way to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who wants to put diplomats' private guards under military control.

It sounds downright risky, but snacking on billions of live bacteria can actually improve digestion, support the immune system and bolster overall health. Called probiotics, these "friendly" microbes with health benefits are found naturally in breast milk and fermented foods such as yogurt, kefir, aged cheese, miso and certain pickles and sauerkraut. They work by keeping intestinal flora balanced and preventing not-so-friendly bacteria from taking over and causing disease. But during the past 50 years, the increased use of antibiotics and a changing diet low in soluble fiber and high in refined carbohydrates have produced an "invisible epidemic of insufficient probiotics," said Gary Huffnagle, professor of internal medicine and microbiology at the University of Michigan Medical School.