In particular, low-status individuals showed high levels of activity in genes associated with the production of various immune-related cells and chemical signalling factors, as well as those to do with inflammation (a general immune response that involves tissue swelling and increased immune-cell activity in the affected area).
Some experienced serious side effects, including three people who died likely because their immune systems attacked healthy tissue.
As a professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School, he studied multiple sclerosis, a genetically conditioned disease in which the immune system mistakes nerve tissue for a foreign invader and systematically destroys it.
But the condition also resembles an autoimmune disease, in which the immune system mistakenly attacks healthy tissue.
Researchers believe that these nascent, undefined cells, which are able to rebuild diseased tissue and restore immune systems, may hold the key to curing a host of diseases and disorders.
Could patients have themselves cloned in order to harvest cells from a genetically-identical embryo, gaining a donor and avoiding the major problem of transplant surgery: rejection of foreign tissue by the immune system?
"This is a stem cell that is generated by the body's own tissue so the immune system does not recognise it and they can get any place they want without being attacked, " said Prof Rambukkana.
And the transplantation of foreign tissue could provoke an immune response from the body which could reject the new cornea.
In addition, advances in suppressing the immune system's response to foreign tissue would give the procedure a better chance of success.
Recent discoveries revealed that tumors are adept at cloaking themselves by hijacking the body's own mechanism for preventing the system's T-cells, the infection- and disease-fighting cells of the immune system, from running amok against healthy tissue.
One on microbes relies on virtual reality to let kids energize the body's immune system by whacking computer-generated images of viruses attacking healthy tissue.
Furthermore, scientists think they understand the steps they need to take to genetically modify pig tissue so that it will not be rejected by the human immune system.
In a study from India, kidney transplant patients had crushed donor kidney tissue injected into their thymus - the body's "immune engine room" where cells can be "educated".
The transplant recipient has to take immune-suppressing drugs for the rest of his or her life to prevent rejection of the donated tissue.
Dead tissue produced by the anti-tumor effects of the Roche drug, could help stimulate the immune system and enhance the impact of the Bristol drug.
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