Scientists have discovered that people with chronic sinus inflammation have an exaggerated immune response to common airborne fungi. ”This study is the first to show a possible immunologic basis for chronic sinusitis, an important starting point to better understand the etiology of the illness,” says Marshall Plaut, M.D., chief of NIAID’s allergic mechanisms section. Despite the enormous health impact of chronic sinusitis–nearly 30 million people were diagnosed with sinusitis in 2002, according to U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and direct costs of the illness exceed $5.6 billion per year–the condition is very poorly understood, he says.

A Dutch researcher has shown that cells which heal the skin following an injury play an important role in the development of the skin disease psoriasis. In people with psoriasis, the skin peels much faster than normal so that it flakes and becomes inflamed. The scientist investigated the transit amplifying cells in the uppermost layer of the skin. These cells develop from stem cells (general unspecialised cells) and specialise into skin cells when new skin cells are needed. The transit amplifying cells are involved in the healing of the skin following an injury and in the regular renewing of the skin.

Researchers have discovered a ”central memory” form of ”helper” T cells that can offer immunity to leishmaniasis, a disease that causes considerable death and disfigurement across the globe and has been found in U.S. military personnel returning from Afghanistan and Iraq. The scientists say the discovery can offer immunity to leishmaniasis, even without the persistent presence of the parasite that caused the disease. Their findings encourage a new approach to creating a vaccine against leishmaniasis and other immune cell mediated diseases such as tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS.

Researchers have identified three new chemical risk factors for bladder cancer in a study involving some 600 people in the Los Angeles area. The newly discovered carcinogens are found in cigarette smoke, which is already known to be a major cause of bladder cancer, contributing to at least 50 percent of the approximately 60,000 cases in the United States every year. All three of the new carcinogens, however, were also found to be risk factors for bladder cancer in nonsmokers. Although second-hand smoke is one source of exposure for non-smokers, the researchers say that it is very important to identify the other sources of exposure for nonsmokers.

Africa today began its largest-ever immunization campaign, with more than one million vaccinators in 23 countries fanning out across the continent this month to inoculate 80 million children against polio as part of a United Nations-led response to an ongoing epidemic of the debilitating disease in the region. Tens of thousands of traditional and religious leaders, school teachers, parents and Rotary Club members will join nurses and a vast array of other volunteers and health workers to go house-to-house and village-to-village — on foot, horseback, bicycle, boat, car or whatever means possible — to hand-deliver the vaccine to every child under the age of five.