Vaccines are among the greatest achievements in medical science, saving millions of lives every year. They protect individuals and entire communities from infectious diseases such as measles, polio, ...

Scientists are getting a better handle on the complexities of how immunity works. Attentive readers might have noticed my absence over the last couple of weeks. I’ve been trying to recover from a bout ...

We sometimes hear about the benefits of “boosting” our immune system, but what we really want to do is support our immune system on an ongoing basis. People often think of the immune system as ...

The concept of herd immunity is one of several factors determining when society might come close to returning to normal. Here's a deeper look at how it works.

Three scientists won the Nobel Prize in medicine Monday for discoveries about how the immune system knows to attack germs and not our own bodies. The work by Mary E. Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell and Dr.

All cellular life—from humans to bacteria—possesses two layers of immunity: innate and adaptive. Scientists have long understood how these two types of immunity work together in higher organisms but ...

Herd immunity is the name for a point in time when it's hard for a disease to spread through a group of people. The idea of herd immunity works for some diseases, such as measles. But it's a harder ...

The 2025 Nobel prize in physiology or medicine celebrates a discovery that answers one of medicine’s most profound questions: how does the immune system know when to attack, and when to stand down?