New Immune Disease Identified
Friday, August 1, 2008 - 22:35
in Health & Medicine
Medical researchers have identified a strange disease in which the innate immune system works in an irregular fashion. A new study describes 9 cases of children severely infected by common bacteria, specifically pneumococci and staphylococci, who do not react to the infection with an inflammatory response; that is, they have no fever and there is no detected increase in the number of white blood cells in the blood. By the time they see a doctor, the infection is widespread. In fact, 3 of the children, aged between 1 and 11 months, died.