#Immunity

Younger adults and stem cell transplant recipients are at highest risk for measles and mumps.

Certain types of cancer treatment can lead to inadequate immune response.

Experts call for heightened precautions and better, more intensive therapies for COVID-19 patients with weakened immune systems.

Research suggests protective effect of natural infection or vaccination is likely to be persistent.

While the United States is getting closer to this point, most health experts caution, it still has ground to cover.

Natural immunity and vaccine responses may be weaker in people with immune suppression, so they should get their second dose promptly.

This is a good time to talk about how sleep can affect the body’s immune response to a vaccination.

The coronavirus vaccines are safe and should be effective even for people with advanced cancer.

More than 95% of people who recovered from COVID-19 had durable immune system memory up to eight months after infection.

Another vaccine, from Novavax, was 89% effective in a U.K. trial, but both were less potent against the South African coronavirus mutation.

Long-lived memory immune cells continue to provide protection even after antibody levels drop.

People who have had evidence of a prior infection appear to have some degree of protection against being reinfected with the virus.

COVID-19 vaccines may be somewhat less effective for people on active treatment, but they should still get vaccinated. And it’s very safe.

Immune cells called T cells helped prevent reinfection and may be especially important if antibody levels are low or decline over time.

Screening patients for autoantibodies against interferons could help predict which patients are more likely to become very sick.