A plant-based cancer vaccine that kick-starts the immune system and can be tailored to target specific tumor types shows promise, according to U.S. researchers who tested the vaccine on 16 people with incurable follicular B-cell lymphoma.

More than 70 percent of the patients developed an immune response and none of them showed any significant side effects, Agence France-Presse reported. The study appears in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Yesterday was National HIV Testing Day. Americans, especially between the ages of 13-64 are encouraged to get tested for HIV in an effort to have everyone ultimately tested for this disease that often leads to death if not diagnosed and treated.

The bad news is that HIV/AIDS still has no cure, and although many people are living healthy lives after an HIV diagnosis, the reality is that many will succumb to the disease of AIDS - particularly poorer individuals who may have no access to health care and may not even know they have HIV in the first place (and thus spreading the virus).

THURSDAY, June 19 (HealthDay News) U.S. researchers say they've identified an enzyme that may help dysentery-causing amoeba evade the immune system.

The finding may help lead to new ways to fight dysentery, a form of diarrhea that affects about 500 million people worldwide each year and is a serious health threat in many regions.

"This is the first enzyme to be identified that looks like it could mediate immune system evasion," Sin Urban, an assistant professor of molecular biology and genetics at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, said in a prepared statement.

ATLANTA - An Oregon man, given less than a year to live, had a complete remission of advanced deadly skin cancer after an experimental treatment that revved up his immune system to fight the tumors.

The 52-year-old patient's dramatic turnaround was the only success in a small study, leading doctors to be cautious in their enthusiasm. However, the treatment reported in Thursday's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine is being counted as the latest in a small series of successes involving immune-priming treatments against deadly skin cancers.

We all know the terms ‘second hand smoke’ or ‘passive smoking’. Meaning we do not smoke but still face risks from the smoke of those around us. But this smoke is by no means passive. It’s actually very aggressive, particularly with children and their developing lungs.

FRIDAY, May 16 (HealthDay News) A treatment that uses natural killer (NK) immune system cells from umbilical cord blood effectively destroys human leukemia cells in mice, researchers say.

THURSDAY, May 15 (HealthDay News) -- The drug ustekinumab has been shown to be a very effective initial and long-term treatment for moderate-to-severe psoriasis in two studies published in this week's issue of The Lancet.

Ustekinumab works by binding to two interleukins, proteins produced by the immune system that mediate inflammatory reactions in diseases like psoriasis. The binding stops the interleukins from reaching their specific receptors on the surface of cells.

By Randy Dotinga
EmpowHer's HealthDay Reporter

WEDNESDAY, May 14 (HealthDay News) -- The largest study of its kind supports the use of a popular three-drug regimen for HIV patients and suggests a cocktail of two classes of drugs is a good alternative.

By Jeffrey Perkel
EmpowHer's HealthDay Reporter

WEDNESDAY, April 30 (HealthDay News) -- Researchers have devised a rapid and efficient method for generating protein sentinels of the immune system, called monoclonal antibodies, which mark and neutralize foreign invaders.

Children who attend daycare or playgroups are about 30 percent less likely to develop the most common type of childhood leukemia, according to University of California, Berkeley researchers who reviewed 14 studies involving nearly 20,000 children, including 6,000 who developed acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL).