Immunoregulation: The key to transplantation and autoimmunity

Mercury-induced Autoimmunity: Genetics and Immunoregulation

Adaptive Autoimmunity and Foxp3-Based Immunoregulation in Zebrafish

BACKGROUND Jawed vertebrates generate their immune-receptor repertoire by a recombinatorial mechanism that has the potential to produce harmful autoreactive lymphocytes. In mammals, peripheral tolerance to self-antigens is enforced by Foxp3(+) regulatory T cells. Recombinatorial mechanisms also operate in teleosts, but active immunoregulation is thought to be a late incorporation to the vertebr...

Immunoregulation of CNS autoimmunity by helminth and mycobacterial infections.

The 'hygiene hypothesis' has been proposed to explain apparent increases in autoimmune disease and allergy in areas of the world with improved health care and sanitation. This hypothesis proposes that the lack of serious childhood infections impairs development of an appropriately educated immune response. Imbalance of Th1 and Th2 responses and lack of regulatory T-cell populations are two of m...

Autoimmunity and lung transplantation.

Lung transplantation is a viable treatment option for a variety of end-stage lung diseases. Since the first successful human lung transplant about 20 years ago, tremendous progress has been made in this field. However, lung allografts have the poorest long term survival compared to other solid organs. The predominant reason for this is the development of chronic rejection, also known as bronchi...

Immunoregulation of autoimmunity by natural killer T cells.

Natural killer T (NKT) cells are a conserved subpopulation of lymphocytes that recognize glycolipid antigens in a CD1d context. Upon activation through their semi-invariant T cell receptor, these cells rapidly release large amounts of immunomodulating Th1 and Th2 cytokines. NKT cells have therefore been implicated in immune responses controlling various diseases, including infection, cancer, tr...