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FOOD ALLERGIES: ITCHING FOR PREVENTION
The number of children with food allergies is rapidly rising. Simply treating allergic reactions is no longer the best solution for treating these allergies. Researchers are exploring options that may prevent allergies from developing in the first place.
GENOME SEQUENCING: PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE
Commercialized genome sequencing is on the rise. Ancestral knowledge and disease risk information are at our fingertips. What does this mean for medicine and our future?
INVASION OF THE CELL SNATCHERS
How can cells that are very far apart in the body influence each other? The cells in our multicellular body can control each other from a distance. This article is about a novel form of cell-to-cell communication that involves sending out little packets of information that can ‘reprogram’ the recipient cell, much like the invasion of a body by an alien force. This type of communication, using structures called exosomes,control both communication during health, but also during disease.
QUANTIFYING THE EFFECTS OF ANTI-VACCINE SENTIMENT ON THE SPREAD OF DISEASE
Anti-vaccine sentiment is as old as vaccination itself. In 1801, Edward Jenner published his results of the success of his early experiments on the smallpox vaccine, and by 1802, enough people were scared of it that political cartoonist James Gillray produced an extremely unsubtle satirical painting entitled “The Cow-Pock—or—the Wonderful Effects of the New Inoculation!”