FRIDAY, Aug. 22 (HealthDay News) -- New details about how rheumatoid arthritis destroys bone have been uncovered by University of Rochester Medical Center researchers, who said their findings are already helping efforts to create new drugs to reverse the process.

Rheumatoid arthritis, an autoimmune disease that affects about two million Americans, causes swelling, pain and deformity in joints and also thins bone.

MONDAY, Aug. 18 (HealthDay News) -- Human embryonic stem cells trigger an immune response in mice, a new study finds. If the same thing happens in humans, it could prove a big roadblock to stem cell-based treatments, researchers say.

Researchers at Stanford University School of Medicine found that common anti-rejection medications could counter the mice's immune response. However, the new finding dashes prior hopes that the immune system gave foreign embryonic stem cells a "free pass" through the body.

FRIDAY, Aug. 15 (HealthDay News) -- In mice, high levels of the male sex hormone testosterone may play an important role in the spread of disease, according to Penn State researchers.

Previous studies have linked testosterone to immune system suppression and found that males experience more bouts of disease and are responsible for more disease transmission than females. But it's not clear why males are more likely to spread disease.

Dr. Maoshing Ni explains the breast cancer risk factors a woman should remove from her life.

FRIDAY, Aug. 1 (HealthDay News) -- A simple measure of an immune system protein called interleukin-8 (IL-8) can predict survival in children with septic shock, according to a study led by researchers at the Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center.

WEDNESDAY, July 30 (HealthDay News)-- New reports on very different approaches to treating Alzheimer's disease could one day lead to better therapies for the mind-robbing condition, experts say.

A trio of studies that were expected to be presented Wednesday at the Alzheimer's Association 2008 International Conference on Alzheimer's Disease in Chicago noted progress made on three different treatment fronts.

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.