ReviewNature reviews. Immunology2013
The speed of change: towards a discontinuity theory of immunity?
Review in Nature reviews. Immunology, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 82 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
82 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 183 citations in OpenAlex.
- Immunogenicity of biologic agents in juvenile idiopathic arthritis: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Rheumatology (Oxford, England) · 2019Pooled it
- Altered NK cell receptor profiles and immune-inflammatory markers in adolescent major depressive disorder: associations with cognitive impairment.BMC psychiatry · 2026Article
- Pre-existing retinal inflammation exacerbates gene therapy-associated uveitis in more rapidly progressive retinal degeneration.Molecular therapy. Advances · 2026Article
- T cell decision-making decodes the dynamic antigenic landscape.Frontiers in immunology · 2026Review
- Leveraging the heterogeneity of the NK cell repertoire for the development of immunotherapies for acute leukemia.Journal of translational medicine · 2025Review
- The Invisible Lens: Why Theoretical Models Are Essential for Interpreting Immune Phenomena.Scandinavian journal of immunology · 2025Review
- Biological and clinical implications of a model of surveillance immunity.The Journal of clinical investigation · 2025Review
- Dynamical model and geometric insights in the discontinuity theory of immunity.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Updating the Discontinuity Theory to the Extended Immunity: The Symmunobiome Concept.European journal of immunology · 2025Review
- The quantum model of T-cell activation: Revisiting immune response theories.Scandinavian journal of immunology · 2024Article
- The immune modules conserved across the tree of life: Towards a definition of ancestral immunity.PLoS biology · 2024Article
- Article
- East meets west: integrating Yin-Yang theory with immunology teaching.Frontiers in immunology · 2024Review
- Reuniting philosophy and science to advance cancer research.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2023Article
- The Combination of Predictive Factors of Pharmacokinetic Origin Associates with Enhanced Disease Control during Treatment of Pediatric Crohn's Disease with Infliximab.Pharmaceutics · 2023Article
- An inference model gives insights into innate immune adaptation and repertoire diversity.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Do astrocytes act as immune cells after pediatric TBI?Neurobiology of disease · 2023Review
- The Adaptation Model of Immunity: Signal IV Matters Most in Determining the Functional Outcomes of Immune Responses.Journal of immunology (Baltimore, Md. : 1950) · 2023Article
- Adaptive discrimination between harmful and harmless antigens in the immune system by predictive coding.iScience · 2023Article
- The podocyte: glomerular sentinel at the crossroads of innate and adaptive immunity.Frontiers in immunology · 2023Review
22 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Immunology - though deeply experimental in everyday practice - is also a theoretical discipline. Recent advances in the understanding of innate immunity, how it is triggered and how it shares features that have previously been uniquely ascribed to the adaptive immune system, can contribute to the refinement of the theoretical framework of immunology. In particular, natural killer cells and macrophages are activated by transient modifications, but adapt to long-lasting modifications that occur in the surrounding tissue environment. This process facilitates the maintenance of self-tolerance while permitting efficient immune responses. In this Essay we extend this idea to other components of the immune system and we propose some general principles that lay the foundations for a unifying theory of immunity - the discontinuity theory. According to this theoretical framework, effector immune responses (namely, activated responses that lead to the potential elimination of the target antigen) are induced by an antigenic discontinuity; that is, by the sudden modification of molecular motifs with which immune cells interact.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.