If someone you know needs extra motivation to quit smoking, here is one you can give them. Nicotine suppresses their immune system. Its effect on macrophages prevents them from responding adequately to inflammation, and thus leaves individuals more prone to infections and cancers.
Researchers find that activated platelets secrete CCL5, which stimulates megakaryocytes to produce more platelets.
Blood platelets play an important role in many physiological conditions that occur in the body. Their main role is to limit bleeding and blood loss by forming clots at sites where the endothelial layer is disrupted. They are formed from fragments of the cytoplasm of megakaryocytic, large bone marrow progenitor cells that release proplatelets into the bloodstream. When conditions such as infections, inflammation or malignancy occur, there is a transient occurrence of a high platelet count. Their blood levels are important. A low platelet level lead to bleeding and too many can result in blood clots, so understanding how their numbers are regulated is important. However, it is still not clear how this occurs – well, until recently.
A diet high in fish intake, providing abundant long chain omega-3 fatty acids, may reduce mortality after breast cancer.
Immunosuppressive properties of novel FoxA1 expressing Treg cells can be exploited for multiple sclerosis treatment
Peripheral Blood Mononuclear Cells (PBMCs) can be used in drug screening. In Part I from this series, we discussed how they can be used to assay drug activity including effects on proliferation, viability, apoptosis, inflammation, and migration in healthy and disease cell models. There are related assays available to measure the effects of drug treatment and, especially for researchers that prefer to use human samples, peripheral blood mononuclear cells are often the cells of choice (PBMCs) are often the cells of choice. The advantages of using human cells initially are immense.