Yuumi Nakamura

1 Introduction Neonates/infants and adults have vastly different immune systems, with a growing list of profound differences in immune cells and their functions that leave newborns highly susceptible to certain pathogens. This apparent failure, and the later transition to a more adult-like immune system, support a common view that the neonatal immune system (NIS) is an incompletely developed version of the adult immune system.

Staph aureus sees the onset of childhood atopic dermatitis Inhibition of Staphylococcus aureus Agr–mediated quorum sensing is known to protect against atopic dermatitis (AD). Now, Matsuoka et al. show that infants who developed AD early in life were more likely to have cheek skin colonized by S. aureus. However, infants harboring S. aureus with acquired spontaneous mutations in Agr were more likely to remain healthy, despite the presence of this bacterium on their skin. This work suggests that S.