CI defended from viruses and bacteria But also from “crazy” cancer cells, often managing to identify and eliminate them before developing cancer: thanks to an army of unleashed cells for the whole body, iThe immune system is constantly guarding our health. Sometimes, however, “deraglia”: exchanges something harmless for a threat, as happens for example in allergies, or even attacks cells or tissues of the organism itself, As in the case of autoimmune diseases.
A healthy and balance immune system is therefore the key to feeling good And that’s why the World Day of Immunologyon April 29: today more than ever it is clear that knowing it thoroughly, taking care of it and above all modulating its activity through specific drugs is the basis of the medicine of the future.
The immune system is under attack
Unfortunately it is equally clear that The immune system today is “under attack”: For a few decades the environment has changed much compared to what our species has adapted over millennia, modeling the delicate balances of the immune response. From climate change, which lengthens the season of pollen, to new synthesis chemicals (over 80 million in the last fifty years, according to the estimates of the Italian Society of Environmental Medicine), today the elements that can trigger an immune reaction are different from the past and above all more numerous.
“The” exposure diseases “have increased if we think for example of hypersensitivity” observes Cristiano Caruso, allergologist of the allergology and immunology unit of the Polyclinic Gemelli Foundation of Rome and secretary to the presidency of the Italian Society of Allergology, Asthma and Clinical Immunology. “Proper nutrition is precisely the first weapon to maintain the immune system healthy: the intestine modulates immune responses thanks to its barrier function, which must be maintained integral with a low -content diet of proinflammatory foods such as sugars, yeasts, fast food, animal meats bred with antibiotics, processed industrial foods and genetically modified ingredients”.
It is also important to keep the skin barrier intact, avoiding to bring in contact with the leather cleaners or irritants, hydrating it and paying attention to the signals of suffering, from the itching to redness. “To monitor the health of the immune system, then, it can be useful to evaluate with a simple blood test if the immune structure is correct or if the amount of some types of cells is unbalanced, thus preparing infections or other diseases” recommends Caruso.
Make sure that the immune system works well is useful because as Romano Danesi, pharmacologist of the State University of Milan adds, “the many cells of the immune system are in a perpetual, delicate balance: they must not be not very active, as can happen in tumors, but not too bright, as happens in the pathologies where there is a chronic inflammation. To encourage this balance, among other things, early control of any disease with an inflammatory component is important: woe to trivialize a rhinitis, an atopic dermatitis, a nasal polypostory. If you do not intervene early and do not follow the prescribed therapies well, the inflammatory mechanisms activate more and more and over time the problem worsens, becoming increasingly difficult to control ».
Thanks to the most recent research, it has been understood that most diseases actually have an immunological component, from inflammatory intestinal diseases to multiple sclerosis, from rheumatological pathologies to dermatitis, to respiratory diseases such as rhinitis and asthma: many different manifestations that share the fact of being chronic, thus entailing a big impact on the quality of life, but also on the same mechanisms of the basis.
One drug for different problems
Having started understanding them is allowing a real cure revolution and changing the prospects of medicine in very different pathologies. “The mediators of immunity and inflammation are often common: different diseases can therefore share the same target, thus allowing to deal with different problems with a single drug” observes Danish.
It has been a short short shortsturer, because for example medicines already approved and available for a disease can more be easier to be prescribed in other conditions where it is discovered that they may have an efficacy, by reducing the waiting times for access to therapy and increasing the number of patients with successful patients: it has happened for example with the dapualmab, a monochlonal antarpoar that after being approved by conditions such as atoptical dermatitis or atoptical dermatitis or athus dermatitis or athotitis or atropic dermatitis or athotitis or atropic anti -derite or Rinosinusitis has become the first molecular target cure for some patients with chronic obstructive bronchopneumopathy, when it was understood that in a consistent quota of cases the disease had the same basic mechanism, the so-called type 2 inflammation.
The importance of knowing markers
“It is precisely the immune mechanisms that guide inflammation, which can be of various kinds” Punctualizes Caruso. «The type 1 is characteristic of the response to viruses and bacteria infections and lights specific cells and mediators; Type 2 inflammation activates other types of immune cells, that of type 3 involves them all. Knowing the markers of the different immune and inflammatory responses allows you to focus with drugs towards the right targets, but also to know in advance those who can better respond to the cure by measuring and monitoring the markers themselves ».
It happens for example in the chronic obstructive bronchopneumopathy: to have understood what is the type of inflammation below and being able to act to turn it off means being able to change at least in part the history of the disease, blocking the key mechanisms that maintain it active. “Understanding the contribution of the immune system to the various pathologies means being able to intervene in the round” he resumes Caruso. «Patients are not only the skin, the intestine, the lung or the piece of organism where their disease makes the symptoms evident, but an overall system where the immune system is a bit of a conductor. This today allows to aim for the remission of many pathologies, both during the treatment and, in some cases, even after it has stopped taking drugs: it means not only not having symptoms, but also having normalized the immune mediators who are altered with the disease “.
The advance of monoclonal antibodies
“All of this using monoclonal antibodies, that is, super-pre-preceptions biological drugs that can now be produced through very flexible development platforms” adds Danish. “It means that” snipers “can be created with ease that affect a single target with an even greater accuracy than that of the so -called small molecules (ie the drugs that have a specific molecular target, but which are not antibodies, editor’s note)”.
A feature that is fundamental when it is necessary to focus against the target with an infallible aim, as happens for example with the monoclonal antibodies used as vaccines: it is the new frontier of prevention, which in Italy in 2024/2025 has translated into the first immunization campaign of newborns against the syncial respiratory virus, responsible for bronchiolitis even very serious in the very small ones. “The antibody obscures a viral surface protein that serves the microorganism to enter the cells, making it thus incapable of giving the infection,” explains Danesi. “An injection protects for several months, so the antibody is an ideal weapon to protect the very young during the winter, the one most at risk”. It is not the only drug that uses immune mechanisms in an innovative way: in April the first infusion of Teplizumab was made in Italy, a monoclonal antibody that can delay the appearance of type 1 diabetes in people at high risk by intercepting and suppressing an excess of immune response that leads to developing the disease.
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