Neuron Driven Immunity

The particular set of immune cells and processes involved in a response to worms and other parasites is known as a type 2 inflammation response. This same type of immune response also occurs during allergic reactions like asthma and eczema. Recently, however, a rather unexpected cell type has been found to contribute to type 2 responses: pain sensing neurons. While studying parasitic infections of mice, scientists found that neurons (green) in the gut epithelium (pictured) could detect the parasites and trigger the proliferation of tuft cells (red) – a specialised cell that initiates a type 2 response. Indeed, when these pain neurons were switched off in the mice, the tuft cell numbers dramatically decreased and the animals struggled to fight the infection. Aside from insights into parasite immunity, this discovery suggests novel medications targeting sensory neurons in addition to the immune system might be effective for calming allergic reactions.

Written by Ruth Williams

Ruth Williams

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Ruth is a freelance science journalist based in the US. She's a regular correspondent for The Scientist, and her work has appeared in The Lancet, Nature, Scientific American Mind, BBC Focus and elsewhere. Twitter @rooph

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• Image courtesy of Elizabeth Emanuel and David Artis, from work by Wen Zhang & Elizabeth R. Emanuel, and colleagues
• Jill Roberts Institute for Research in Inflammatory Bowel Disease, Weill Cornell Medicine, Cornell University, New York, NY, USA
• Image originally published with no restrictions equating to Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Research published in Nature, January 2026