The body’s defenses may be mildly lowered for about 1 to 4 weeks after a single steroid shot into a joint or near your spine. In some people, particularly with higher doses, this effect may last up to ...

Every day, your immune system performs a delicate balancing act, defending you from thousands of pathogens that cause disease while sparing your body’s own healthy cells. This careful equilibrium is ...

I am lying under a blanket, feeling rough, staring at a bowl of oranges. Every fibre of my being is urging me to devour the lot. I can hear my mum – and medical friends at university – insisting that ...

We often judge our immune systems based on how many colds we catch in a year, but experts say that’s an oversimplification of what is a highly complex network of cells, tissues and organs that works ...

As the temperature drops and sniffles start making their rounds, we’re all thinking about ways to strengthen our immunity: vitamin C, hand sanitizer, maybe a flu shot. But while you’re focused on ...

Why does the same virus barely faze one person while sending another to the hospital? New research shows the answer lies in a molecular record etched into our immune cells by both our genes and our ...

Radiation therapy, once thought of mainly as a local cancer treatment, is now showing power to awaken the immune system in surprising ways. Researchers discovered that combining radiation with ...

"We know a lot about what the immune system sees and does if a patient has an allergy, but we know very little about what happens when things go right," said Elizabeth "Beth" Sattely, an associate ...