Dr. Paul Tabor
1. It was heralded as the magic bullet against viruses in the late 1970's and 1980's. Even the name - INTERFERON - sounded like a chemical super hero. But the effectiveness of interferon in treating or preventing many viral diseases did not live up to the high expectations and the side-effects of interferon treatment were often intolerable. Interferon has been used in the treatment of viral hepatitis B and C. You should check the web page of a hepatitis B patient who was treated with interferon to see get a sense of what it is like to undergo this treatment including the side effects. Interferon has also been an effective therapy against a very different virus that causes genital warts. Interferon is a small protein produced by many types of cells after those cells are infected by viruses. Production of interferons is stimulated by infections from many different viruses and, in turn, interferons are able to inhibit the progression of replication of many different viruses. There are three types of interferons; each has a specific activity but all of the activities are similar to the way the immune system responds to infectious agents. Interferons have the ability to control growth and differentiation of cells of the immune system in addition to their actions as antiviral agents. Interferons, then, are similar to cytokines. Interestingly, the actions of some interferons disrupt the actions of other compounds that regulate cell growth, namely oncogene proteins. You are probably familiar with the role of oncogene proteins. So, is there the possibiity of a new role for interferons after being used solely to treat viral infections? When given as a treatment after surgery, interferon was effective in reducing the recurrence of melanomas. If interferon slowed the return of melanomas after surgery, would a combination of interferon and chemotherapy be more effective than chemotherapy alone? Not only did survival of melanoma patients increase, but the quality of life was improved indicating that side effects were tolerable. Do the results of use of interferon as a cancer therapy parallel interferon's activites as a non-specific antiviral drug?
2. Very often when biology text books discuss the immune system, there is the impression that the immune system is consistent day in and day out in its vigilance in fighting off disease. That is certainly not true and one of the most interesting regulators of our immune system's response is stress. There are different types of stress, for example chronic stress involves a taking care of a sick loved one for years. Acute stress is the 1000-point midterm exam that was just announced for tomorrow. All people handle stress differently and the better stress in handled, the less affect it has on your health. How well do you think you handle stress? Studies have been done that indicate the degree of stress-induced health problems that arise from various situations. So, if stress has such dilitarious effects on our health, is there anything we can do to remedy stress in our lives? We tend to think of stress as a psychological problem and the immune response involves cellular and biochemical activities. So what type of communication is there that allows stress to regulate a chemically-mediated response? Do not be overwhelmed by this article. It is written by a college student. There are written summaries of the papers she used to prepare her report. If stress diminishes the immune response, how could the stress of knowing that you were HIV positive affect your health when your immune response is already suppressed? Or if your were told you have cancer, how would stress affect some of the most important cancer fighting immune cells in your body? If someone under stress is given a vaccination will stress inhibit the body's ability to develop immunity?