Download or read book The Quantal Theory of Immunity written by Kendall A. Smith and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2010 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explains how the immune system functions, namely, how individual cells of the immune system make the decision to respond or not to respond to foreign microbes and molecules, and how the critical molecules function to trigger the cellular reactions in an all-or-none (quantal) manner. To date, there has not been a complete description of the immune system and its cells and molecules, primarily because most of the information has accumulated only in the last 40 years and our understanding has been expanding rapidly only in the last 20 years. It is now clear that the cells have evolved a way to ?count? the number of foreign antigenic molecular ?hits?, and they only react when a critical number of events have accumulated. Subsequently, control over the reaction is transferred to a systemic lymphocytotrophic hormone system that determines the tempo, magnitude and duration of the immune reaction. This book explains in detail how the immune system, cells and molecules work for the first time. With this understanding as a basis, the pathogenesis of autoimmunity can now be understood as a mutational usurpation of the genes encoding molecules that participate in a sensitive feedback regulatory control of the immune reaction. By comparison, malignant transformation is understood as a mutational usurpation of the genes encoding the molecules that control the quantal decision to proliferate, so that normal ligand/receptor cell growth control is circumvented. This molecular understanding of the immune system is especially important for the design of successful vaccines, and also explains why vaccines fail.
Download or read book Theory s Autoimmunity written by Zahi Zalloua and published by Northwestern University Press. This book was released on 2018-10-15 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Engaging scholars from across humanistic fields grappling with the role and value of theory in our times, Theory's Autoimmunity argues for reclaiming theory's skepticism as a value. To cultivate theory's skeptical impulses is to embrace what Jacques Derrida has termed autoimmunity: a condition of openness to the outside—openness of the self, the community, democracy, or other ideals—that allows for change. Openness to change comes with risks, and the self-protective temptation to immunize oneself or one's community against these risks is strong. Yet without such risks, without openness to otherness, no encounter with the new, with difference, can ever take place. Without autoimmunity, theory becomes stagnant and programmatic, unable to receive and respond to the other or the event, to address, revise, and produce new meanings. Taking up the challenge of thinking theory as skepticism, with and against philosophy, this study turns to literature as an interlocutor, investigating the ways theory, like the literary works of Montaigne, Baudelaire, Stendhal, Morrison, or Duras, declines to put on the interpretive brakes, to stop reading at a point of understanding. Undoing and remaking itself, theory—those critical interpretive practices that revel in the creation and proliferation of meaning—becomes autoimmune.
Download or read book Idiotypes in Medicine Autoimmunity Infection and Cancer written by R.C. Kennedy and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 1997-11-19 with total page 557 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the most comprehensive review of the idiotypic network available. All the current knowledge of idiotypes of the various antibodies is incorporated in this volume. The pathogenic role of idiotypes in autoimmunity and cancer is reviewed in depth. The therapeutic part focusses on harnessing anti-idiotypes for treating autoimmunological disorders, and on the employment of idiotypes for vaccines in cancer and infectious diseases, as well as explaining the manipulation of the idiotypic network in autoimmunity and cancer idiotypes and vaccines.
Download or read book Autoimmunity and Autoimmune Disease written by David Evered and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2008-04-30 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work focuses on the autoimmune processes that have now been proven to underlie a number of serious diseases, including diabetes mellitus, rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis. Papers explore the rapidly expanding developments in research on immune response and regulation, and their potential in the development of treatments for autoimmune diseases. The wide range of subjects covered here include: the nature of intracellular and cell surface-derived ``self'' antigens; competing theories of the generation of immune tolerance and their implications of current theories for research and treatment; possible links between autoimmunity and genetic complement deficiency; the contributions of interferons and class II HLA antigen expression to autoimmunity; and the potential of monoclonal antibodies and other biotechnological advances in treating human autoimmune conditions.
Download or read book Intolerant Bodies written by Warwick Anderson and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2014-11-15 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A history of autoimmunity that validates the experience of patients while challenging assumptions about the distinction between the normal and the pathological. Winner of the NSW Premier's History Award of the Arts NSW Autoimmune diseases, which affect 5 to 10 percent of the population, are as unpredictable in their course as they are paradoxical in their cause. They produce persistent suffering as they follow a drawn-out, often lifelong, pattern of remission and recurrence. Multiple sclerosis, lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, and type 1 diabetes—the diseases considered in this book—are but a handful of the conditions that can develop when the immune system goes awry. Intolerant Bodies is a unique collaboration between Ian Mackay, one of the prominent founders of clinical immunology, and Warwick Anderson, a leading historian of twentieth-century biomedical science. The authors narrate the changing scientific understanding of the cause of autoimmunity and explore the significance of having a disease in which one’s body turns on itself. The book unfolds as a biography of a relatively new concept of pathogenesis, one that was accepted only in the 1950s. In their description of the onset, symptoms, and course of autoimmune diseases, Anderson and Mackay quote from the writings of Charles Dickens, Edgar Allan Poe, Joseph Heller, Flannery O’Connor, and other famous people who commented on or grappled with autoimmune disease. The authors also assess the work of the dedicated researchers and physicians who have struggled to understand the mysteries of autoimmunity. Connecting laboratory research, clinical medicine, social theory, and lived experience, Intolerant Bodies reveals how doctors and patients have come to terms, often reluctantly, with this novel and puzzling mechanism of disease causation.
Download or read book Immune Mediated Diseases written by Michael R. Shurin and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2007-07-25 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume includes contributions from the speakers of the Second IMD Congress (September 10-15, 2007; Moscow, Russia) who were eager to share some of the academic and clinical enthusiasm that defines the IMD meetings. The goal of the International Immune-Mediated Diseases: From Theory to Therapy (IMD) Congress is to bring the world’s best immunologists and clinicians to Moscow.
Download or read book Vaccines and Autoimmunity written by Yehuda Shoenfeld and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2015-07-07 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In light of the discovery of Autoimmune Syndrome Induced by Adjuvants, or ASIA, Vaccines and Autoimmunity explores the role of adjuvants – specifically aluminum in different vaccines – and how they can induce diverse autoimmune clinical manifestations in genetically prone individuals. Vaccines and Autoimmunity is divided into three sections; the first contextualizes the role of adjuvants in the framework of autoimmunity, covering the mechanism of action of adjuvants, experimental models of adjuvant induced autoimmune diseases, infections as adjuvants, the Gulf War Syndrome, sick-building syndrome (SBS), safe vaccines, toll-like receptors, TLRS in vaccines, pesticides as adjuvants, oil as adjuvant, mercury, aluminum and autoimmunity. The following section reviews literature on vaccines that have induced autoimmune conditions such as MMR and HBV, among others. The final section covers diseases in which vaccines were known to be the solicitor – for instance, systemic lupus erythematosus – and whether it can be induced by vaccines for MMR, HBV, HCV, and others. Edited by leaders in the field, Vaccines and Autoimmunity is an invaluable resource for advanced students and researchers working in pathogenic and epidemiological studies.
Download or read book Aging written by L. Robert and published by Karger Medical and Scientific Publishers. This book was released on 2014-05-16 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Aging inspired a large number of theories trying to rationalize the aging process common to all living beings. In this publication the most important environmental and intrinsic mechanisms involved in the aging process and in its pathological consequences are reviewed. Furthermore theoretical and experimental evidence of the most important theoretical elements based on Darwinian evolution, cellular aging, role of cell membranes, free radicals and oxidative processes, receptor-mediated reactions, the extracellular matrix and immune functions as well as the most important environmental and intrinsic mechanisms involved in the aging process and in its pathological consequences are discussed. These presentations of theories and related experimental facts give a global overview of up to date concepts of the biology of the aging process and are of essential reading not only for specialists in this field but also for practitioners of scientific, medical, social and experimental sciences.
Download or read book An Epidemic of Absence written by Moises Velasquez-Manoff and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-09-17 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A controversial, revisionist approach to autoimmune and allergic disorders considers the perspective that the human immune system has been disabled by twentieth-century hygiene and medical practices.
Download or read book Oxford Textbook of Rheumatology written by Philip Conaghan and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-10 with total page 1553 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A strong clinical emphasis is present throughout this volume from the first section of commonly presenting problems through to the section addressing problems shared with a range of other clinical sub-specialties.
Download or read book Autoimmune Diseases Clinical Theory written by Marcy Ward and published by . This book was released on 2015-03-23 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Autoimmune Disorders, a heterogeneous and multifaceted group of diseases, affect virtually any organ of the human body. This book intends to present currently accessible manifestations by providing an etiopathogenetic overview of both systemic and organ d
Download or read book Thyroid Autoimmunity written by A. Pinchera and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 579 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1956, three groups independently reported evidence that some thyroid disease appearing spontaneously in humans or experimentally induced in animals are related to autoimmune processes. The interval between these landmark discoveries and the present has witnessed a remarkable and continuing growth of both knowledge and concepts concerning the mechanisms of immune regulation, the pathogenesis of autoimmune thyroid diseases, and their clinical and laboratory manifestations. More importantly knowledge of thyroid autoimmunity has, in many respects, comprised the vanguard of an ever increasing appreciation and understanding of autoimmune diseases in general. On November 24-26 1986, an International Symposium on Thyroid Autoimmunity was held in Pisa. Its purpose was to commemorate the birth of thyroid autoimmunity as a scientific discipline, to summarize current knowledge and concepts in this area, and where possible, to anticipate areas of opportunity for the future - hence the theme of the Symposium, Memories and Perspectives. To open the meeting, the Magnifico Rettore (Chancellor) of the University of Pisa granted special Awards to Dr. Deborah Doniach, Dr. Ivan Roitt, and Dr. Noel R. Rose, who published the first fundamental studies in the field of thyroid autoimmunity, and to Dr. Duncan G. Adams, whose discovery of the long-acting thyroid stimulator (LATS) opened the door to our current understanding of the pathogenesis of Graves' disease. During the meeting thirty plenary lectures were presented.
Download or read book Auto Immunity and Auto Immune Disease written by Burnet MacFarlane and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1957 or thereabouts I became impressed with how immunity could be looked at as a process of Darwinian selection amongst the circulating lymphoid cells of the body. The clonal selection theory which grew out of this has been generally accepted in principle by immunologists, but I do not feel that its full implications in relation to pathology have yet been widely realized. In a previous book, Immunological Surveillance, I have tried to apply the approach to cancer immunity. This is a basically similar attempt to look at auto-immune disease from the same Darwinian point of view. Anyone who attempts to produce acceptable general statements about complex biological and clinical phenomena must have a certain sense of guilt. No biological phenomenon can ever be completely, or even adequately, described. There can, at best, only be a progressive improvement in the acceptability, the intellectual elegance, or the practical usefulness of the working generalizations that can be produced. Any attempt to write at this interpretative level can easily be brushed aside as superficial, unnecessary, and liable to be proved wrong or irrelevant by new developments. It is anathema to many good professional scientists and their objections are real enough.
Download or read book The Mosaic of Autoimmunity written by Yehuda Shoenfeld and published by Elsevier Science Limited. This book was released on 1989 with total page 523 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book comprehensively sets out the common aetiopathogenetic mechanisms shared by many, apparently diverse, diseases of the immune system. Unlike most other texts it does not emphasise the differences between autoimmune diseases, but establishes their many common links including hormonal effects, dietary and immunogenetic influences, complement deficiencies and environmental factors. Special attention is given to the effects of ageing and the relationship with malignancies. The scope of the book is very broad so as to cover the integration of the many diverse components which interact to cause autoimmunity, and it contains many 1988 and 1989 references and over 100 figures and tables, offering an attractive, up-to-date guide to modern concepts. It will greatly assist immunologists wishing to enter the field of autoimmunity, and will serve as an invaluable reference work for those already working in it.
Download or read book Autoimmunities written by Stefan Herbrechter and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-12-13 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Autoimmunity refers to the phenomenon whereby an organism or body mounts an immune response against its own tissues. As a medical term, autoimmunity is today used to account for any instance in which the body fails to recognise its own constituents as ‘self’, an error that results in the paradoxical situation in which self-defense (immunity, protection) manifests as self-harm (pathology). As a result, the very possibility of autoimmunity poses a problem for the notion of immunity and the concept of identity that underpins it: if self-protection can just as readily take the form of self-destruction, then it seems that the very identity of the self, and thus the boundary between self and other, is in question. Conceptually, autoimmunity thus challenges us to think critically about the nature of any sovereign entity or identity, be they human or nonhuman, cells, nations, or other forms of community. This volume reflects and engages with different disciplinary approaches to autoimmunity in the theoretical, medical or posthumanities, social and political theory, and critical science studies. It aims to provide a topical intervention within the current discussion on biopolitical thought and critical posthumanist futures. This book was originally published as a special issue of Parallax.
Download or read book Endocrine Immunology written by W. Savino and published by Karger Medical and Scientific Publishers. This book was released on 2017-02-28 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the last decades, several in vitro and in vivo studies have revealed the existence of a very complex network between the neuroendocrine and immune system. Important molecular mechanisms underlying these interactions, in both physiological and pathological conditions, have also been described. Indeed, hormones play a pivotal role in the development and functional regulation of the immune system – both innate and acquired responses. Immune system cells present specific hormone receptors and themselves produce some hormones, thus influencing hormone secretion. More recently, the modulation of hormone secretion has been attempted for treating associated autoimmune disorders, further supporting the strong interplay between the endocrine and immune system. Distinguished experts, who have published extensively in their fields, have contributed comprehensive chapters to this volume. The focus is on the various aspects of endocrine-neuro-immune connections, providing an updated panorama - from basics to clinical applications - of current knowledge and still debated issues.
Download or read book Regulatory T Cells written by Alexander Rudensky and published by Academic Press. This book was released on 2011-12-06 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Advances in Immunology, a long-established and highly respected publication, presents current developments as well as comprehensive reviews in immunology. Articles address the wide range of topics that comprise immunology, including molecular and cellular activation mechanisms, phylogeny and molecular evolution, and clinical modalities. Edited and authored by the foremost scientists in the field, each volume provides up-to-date information and directions for the future. This volume focuses on regulatory T-cells. Contributions from leading authorities and industry experts Informs and updates on all the latest developments in the field
