New Way The Body Fights Fungal Infection Discovered

A team of researchers led by Amy G. Hise, M.D., M.P.H., assistant professor at the Center for Global Health and Diseases, Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, is the first to discover how the body fights off oral yeast infections caused by the most common human fungal pathogen, Candida.

The findings, published in Cell, Host and Microbe, identified the critical role of a protein, interleukin-1β or IL-1β, secreted by a variety of cells in the human immune system to protect the body from oral colonization by Candida albicans and preventing it from spreading to infect host tissue and blood. The study defines the precise mechanism by which the body's immune cells produce IL-1β following contact with Candida albicans. Further, it shows that a complex of proteins, collectively termed the NLRP3 inflammasome, function to produce IL-1β from an inactive, precursor form into a form that can be secreted by cells and subsequently function to modulate the immune system and its responses.

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