SAN FRANCISCO—Standing at a podium in front of an audience of psychiatrists, clinicians and scientists, Firdaus Dhabhar brings up a video of his infant son on a large projector screen and presses play. Smiling and wriggling, Dhabhar’s son rests on his back in a doctor’s office—perfectly content. “Watch for the immediate reaction,” Dhabhar tells the [...]

Americans have been on an antibacterial kick for the past several years. Our hand soap, dish soap, and body wash have morphed into an arsenal of bug-killing napalm, eliminating all but the heartiest of bacteria. And there are, indeed, some scary microbes crawling around out there—Staph and C. Diff, just to name a couple. But [...]

Whenever I stay in a hotel room, I’m a little wary of the throw pillows, a bit skittish about the television remote and would never even consider taking a bath. Perhaps I’m being overly paranoid, but as a slight germaphobe, I figure it doesn’t hurt to be a little cautious. New preliminary research vindicates at [...]

The relationship between food and a gastro-intestinal disease might sound simple. But new research is revealing that what we put into our bodies can cause a cascade of complex interactions among various systems—from metabolism to the immune system—that keep us well or make us sick. And it appears that a popular component of the classic [...]

Rhesus macaques, which are some of the best studied of all monkeys, establish hierarchies in their social groups. Whenever two macaques tussle over a piece of food, say, or the right to mate, the monkey with the higher rank usually wins. Primatologists have established that monkeys of a lower social status are generally more stressed [...]

Men tend to get coronary artery disease much earlier than do women. For some men, the reason for that might be in part because of their fathers—and their father’s father—according to a new study, published online Wednesday in The Lancet. The study analyzed data from 3,233 unrelated white men enrolled in previous U.K. studies. From [...]

Immune cells do more than just fend off infections. When cholesterol starts building up in arteries, scavenger white blood cells known as macrophages report to the scene to start trying to digest it. These little cells, though, don’t always manage to clear the site and often end up as part of the blockade themselves. These [...]

NEW YORK—The immune system works hard to keep us well physically, but might it also be partly to blame for some mental illnesses? "The immune system may play a significant role in the development of depression," Andrew Miller, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Emory University School of Medicine, said Tuesday at a [...]

Vitamin D deficiency has been linked to a rapidly expanding inventory of ailments—including heart disease, cancer and the common cold. A new discovery demonstrates how the vitamin plays a major role in keeping the body healthy in the first place, by allowing the immune system’s T cells to start doing their jobs.  In order for [...]