Autoimmune diseases and gender gap

PNEI REVIEW ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 14-29
Author(s):  
Anna Giulia Bottaccioli ◽  
Francesco Bottaccioli

The concept of autoimmunity is both counterintuitive and anti-paradigmatic: indeed, during the last century, the immune system has been viewed as a defence system against external microbial agents - "the" cause of illness. However, the scientific research has found out that the immune system shows a much higher complexity, similarly to the nervous system: in particular, the immune system has an outstanding ability to adapt to the environment, which is defined by all the stimuli coming from either the inside of the body or the external world. Nutrition, physical activity, pollution, psychological stress, social relationships, and microbes (both symbiotic and pathogens) can greatly influence the activation of the immune system: on the one hand, the immune cells could be induced to orchestrate efficient responses to potential threats; on the other hand, they could be induced to attack the tissues of the body. The authors, therefore, aim to briefly review the research that showed how the environment, more than genetic factors, could influence the immune system, in particular, expanding on the reasons why autoimmunity appears to be way more prevalent in women than in men.

2005 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 55-72
Author(s):  
Håkan Larsson

Håkan Larsson: Sport and gender This article concerns bodily materialisation as it occurs in youth sport. It is based on interviews with teenagers 16 to 19 years of age doing track and field athletics. The purpose of the article is to elucidate how the notion of a “natural body“ can be seen as a cultural effect of sports practice and sports discourse. On the one hand, the body is materialised as a performing body, and on the other as a beautiful body. The “performing body“ is a single-sexed biological entity. The “beautiful body“ is a double-sexed and distinctly heterosexually appealing body. As these bodies collide in teenager track and field, the female body materialises as a problematic body, a body that is at the same time the subject of the girl’s personality. The male body materialises as an unproblematic body, a body that is the object of the boy’s personality. However, the body as “(a problematic) subject“ or as “(an unproblematic) object“ is not in itself a gendered body. Rather, these are positions on a cultural grid of power-knowledge relations. A girl might position herself in a male discourse, and a boy might position himself in a female discourse, but in doing so, they seem to have to pay a certain price in order not to be seen as queer.


2018 ◽  
Vol 400 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sander Bekeschus ◽  
Christian Seebauer ◽  
Kristian Wende ◽  
Anke Schmidt

AbstractLeukocytes are professionals in recognizing and removing pathogenic or unwanted material. They are present in virtually all tissues, and highly motile to enter or leave specific sites throughout the body. Less than a decade ago, physical plasmas entered the field of medicine to deliver their delicate mix of reactive species and other physical agents for mainly dermatological or oncological therapy. Plasma treatment thus affects leukocytes via direct or indirect means: immune cells are either present in tissues during treatment, or infiltrate or exfiltrate plasma-treated areas. The immune system is crucial for human health and resolution of many types of diseases. It is therefore vital to study the response of leukocytes after plasma treatmentin vitroandin vivo. This review gathers together the major themes in the plasma treatment of innate and adaptive immune cells, and puts these into the context of wound healing and oncology, the two major topics in plasma medicine.


2010 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 379-391
Author(s):  
Petra Jonvallen

This article examines how sex differentiation is invoked from body fat with a focus on how various monitoring devices participate in the construction of bodies. By using the concept of ‘local biologies’, denoting the linkage of the body to place with its local physical and social conditions, it argues against the ‘one-size-fits-all’ paradigm of modern medicine and critiques the mechanistic search for regularity in medical research. By looking at medical literature on obesity and how contemporary obesity researchers and clinicians link body fat to sex, local biologies of bodies in a Swedish obesity clinic are contrasted to the universal biologies represented in medical research. The article also provides empirical examples of how fat has the potential to undermine traditional sex and gender binaries.


Author(s):  
Rosalia Vazquez-Arevalo ◽  
Alberto Rodríguez Nabor ◽  
Xochitl López Aguilar ◽  
Juan Manuel Mancilla-Díaz

Abstract The objective of this research was to determine the body perception (BP) of preschoolers and compare it with the one reported by their parents. A total of 48 preschoolers participated (Mage = 5 years, SD = 0.5), 21 boys, 27 girls, and their parents (47 fathers and 48 mothers). The children were weighed and measured, also they answered the instrument Seven Figures of Collins (SFC) and seven questions about food, beauty and health. The parents answered the Body Image Questionnaire, the Stunkard Figures, as well as the SFCs to identify the real (RF) and ideal figure(IF) of their children. When children described themselves, they mostly referred the normal figure, coinciding with their parents. A very small proportion of preschoolers perceived themselves with obesity (around 29-30%); while any parent identified their children with obesity. 50% of preschoolers chose thinner silhouettes than their body mass index (BMI), but not emaciated. For RF, most parents chose normal weight for boys and light overweight for girls; for IF parents chose, for both sexes, the one with light overweight. In conclusion, the preschool BP disagreed between reality and perception, regardless of their BMI and gender. The parents also did not have an adequate BP for their children. Resumen El objetivo de esta investigación fue conocer la percepción corporal (PC) de preescolares y compararla con la que sus padres tienen de ellos. Participaron 48 preescolares (Medad = 5 años, DE = 0.5), 21 niños y 27 niñas, y sus padres (47 papás y 48 mamás). Los niños fueron pesados y medidos, contestaron el instrumento Siete Figuras de Collins (SFC) y, con relación a éste, siete preguntas sobre alimentación, belleza y salud. A los padres se les aplicó el Cuestionario de Imagen Corporal, las Figuras de Stunkard, además de las SFC para que identificaran la figura real (FR) e ideal (FI) de sus hijos. Para describirse, los preescolares refirieron mayormente la figura normopeso, coincidiendo con sus padres. Fue mínima la proporción de preescolares que se percibieron con obesidad (presente en 29-30%); mientras que ningún padre la identificó en sus hijos. El 50% de los preescolares eligió siluetas más delgadas a su índice de masa corporal (IMC), pero no emaciadas. Como FR, la mayoría de los padres eligió la normopeso para los niños y con sobrepeso ligero para las niñas; como FI eligieron, para ambos sexos, aquélla con sobrepeso ligero. En conclusión, la PC del preescolar discrepó entre la real y la percibida, independientemente de su IMC y sexo. Los padres tampoco tuvieron una adecuada PC de sus hijos.


2018 ◽  
Vol 98 (1) ◽  
pp. 477-504 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Dantzer

Because of the compartmentalization of disciplines that shaped the academic landscape of biology and biomedical sciences in the past, physiological systems have long been studied in isolation from each other. This has particularly been the case for the immune system. As a consequence of its ties with pathology and microbiology, immunology as a discipline has largely grown independently of physiology. Accordingly, it has taken a long time for immunologists to accept the concept that the immune system is not self-regulated but functions in close association with the nervous system. These associations are present at different levels of organization. At the local level, there is clear evidence for the production and use of immune factors by the central nervous system and for the production and use of neuroendocrine mediators by the immune system. Short-range interactions between immune cells and peripheral nerve endings innervating immune organs allow the immune system to recruit local neuronal elements for fine tuning of the immune response. Reciprocally, immune cells and mediators play a regulatory role in the nervous system and participate in the elimination and plasticity of synapses during development as well as in synaptic plasticity at adulthood. At the whole organism level, long-range interactions between immune cells and the central nervous system allow the immune system to engage the rest of the body in the fight against infection from pathogenic microorganisms and permit the nervous system to regulate immune functioning. Alterations in communication pathways between the immune system and the nervous system can account for many pathological conditions that were initially attributed to strict organ dysfunction. This applies in particular to psychiatric disorders and several immune-mediated diseases. This review will show how our understanding of this balance between long-range and short-range interactions between the immune system and the central nervous system has evolved over time, since the first demonstrations of immune influences on brain functions. The necessary complementarity of these two modes of communication will then be discussed. Finally, a few examples will illustrate how dysfunction in these communication pathways results in what was formerly considered in psychiatry and immunology to be strict organ pathologies.


2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (73) ◽  
pp. 163-168
Author(s):  
I. Khariv ◽  
B. Gutyj ◽  
V. Hunchak ◽  
N. Slobodyuk ◽  
A. Vynyarska ◽  
...  

The immune system provides resistance of the organism against bacterial and viral infections in the body of the poultry. In the intestinal mucosa of eymeria it was secrete metabolic products, that are toxic to various systems and tissues of turkeys. Eymeria, parasitizing in the gut, inhibit specific phase of immunity presented by antibodies (humoral type), reduce the activity of sensitized cells (cell type), slow down nonspecific phase of immunity, represented by various immune cells. The rapid and complete recovery of functional state of the immune system in turkeys, affected by eymeriozic invasion it was found if brovitatoxide was given if the aggregate of the fruits of milk thistle. Fruits contain group of flavius lignans named «Sylimaryn», acting immune stimulatory for the development of secondary immuno deficiencies state of body.


F1000Research ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 2141
Author(s):  
Katie Alexander ◽  
Charles O. Elson

Bacteria and mammals have co-evolved with one another over millennia, and it has become impossible to interpret mucosal immunity without taking the microbiota into consideration. In fact, the primary role of the mucosal immune system is regulating homeostasis and the host relationship with the microbiota. Bacteria are no longer seen as simply invading pathogens, but rather a necessary component to one’s own immune response. On the one hand, the microbiota is a vital educator of immune cells and initiator of beneficial responses; but, on the other, dysbiosis of microbiota constituents are associated with inflammation and autoimmune disorders. In this review, we will consider recent advances in the understanding of how the microbiota influences host mucosal immunity, particularly the initial development of the immune response and its implications.


Physiology ◽  
1991 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 64-69
Author(s):  
JD Wood

An independent minibrain with as many neurons as the spinal cord and an immune system with a number of immune cells equal to those in the remainder of the body are found in the gut. This presents an ideal model for direct investigation of neuroimmune communication.


Complexity ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 2019 ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Wei Zhang ◽  
Juan Zhang ◽  
Yong-Ping Wu ◽  
Li Li

As we all know, bacteria is different from virus which with certain types can be killed by the immune cells in the body. The brucellosis, a bacterial disease, can invade the body by indirect transmission from environment, which has not been researched by combining with immune cells. Considering the effects of immune cells, we put a minimum infection dose of brucellosis invading into the dairy cows as an immunological threshold and get a switch model. In this paper, we accomplish a thorough dynamics analysis of a SEIB switch model. On the one hand, we can get a disease-free and bacteria-free steady state and up to three endemic steady states which may be thoroughly analyzed in different cases of a minimum infection dose in a switch model. On the other hand, we calculate the basic reproduction number R0 and know that the disease-free and bacteria-free steady state is a global stability when R0<1, and the one of the endemic steady state is a conditionally global stability when R0>1. We find that different amounts of R0 may lead to different steady states of brucellosis, and considering the effects of immunology is more serious in mathematics and biology.


2013 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 256-262
Author(s):  
Sheqibe Beadini ◽  
Nexhbedin Beadini ◽  
Besa Dalipi ◽  
Gazmend Iseni ◽  
Hesat Aliu ◽  
...  

Background: Factors affecting the growth of the organism may be either endogenous, such as genetic factors like genetic heritage, or exogenous such as food, social and health status, physical activity, etc. A factor of great importance for human physical growth is BMI, a parameter defined as the ratio of human body weight and height. Aims:The purpose of this article is to determine the BMI in Macedonia’s population by analyzing age and gender, and finding the correlation of endogeneous and exogeneous factors and the BMI factor. All measurements were performed at the health facility. Surveys were also conducted for gathering information about gender, age, weight, height, eating habits, socioeconomic status, and education. Results: This clinical research studied 257 patients, 143 males and 114 females. Among other factors involved in this research are blood glucose, fat parameters and potential risk factors for cardiovascular and nephrotic diseases. Conclusions: After the discovery and identification of renal disease, the impact of BMI can be distinguished from pathological processes, such as irregular eating, various inflammations, and changes in the metabolism of vitamin D, etc. Bangladesh Journal of Medical Science Vol. 12 No. 03 July ’13 Page 256-262DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3329/bjms.v12i3.12618 


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