{"id":182670,"date":"2024-02-14T07:22:35","date_gmt":"2024-02-14T13:22:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/02\/scientists-discover-hidden-army-of-lung-flu-fighters"},"modified":"2024-02-14T07:22:35","modified_gmt":"2024-02-14T13:22:35","slug":"scientists-discover-hidden-army-of-lung-flu-fighters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/02\/scientists-discover-hidden-army-of-lung-flu-fighters","title":{"rendered":"Scientists discover hidden army of lung flu fighters"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/scientists-discover-hidden-army-of-lung-flu-fighters2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Scientists have long thought of the fluid-filled sac around our lungs merely as a cushion from external damage. Turns out, it also houses potent virus-eating cells that rush into the lungs during flu infections.<\/p>\n<p>Not to be confused with phages, which are viruses that infect bacteria, these cells are macrophages, immune cells produced in the body.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe name macrophage means \u2018big eater.\u2019 They gobble up bacteria, viruses, <a href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/tags\/cancer+cells\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">cancer cells<\/a>, and dying cells. Really, anything that looks foreign, they take it up and destroy it,\u201d said UC Riverside virologist Juliet Morrison, who led the discovery team. \u201cWe were surprised to find them in the lungs because nobody has seen this before, that these cells go into the lung when there\u2019s an infection.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Scientists have long thought of the fluid-filled sac around our lungs merely as a cushion from external damage. Turns out, it also houses potent virus-eating cells that rush into the lungs during flu infections. Not to be confused with phages, which are viruses that infect bacteria, these cells are macrophages, immune cells produced in the [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1506],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-182670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-food"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182670"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182670\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}