J. Exp. Med. doi:10.1084/jem.20072689 (2008)

Proteins used by ticks to evade their hosts' immune systems may one day provide a new way to fight inflammation, researchers say.

Compounds in tick saliva block inflammation and allow the bloodsucking parasites to feed off a host for long time periods without alerting its immune system. Amanda Proudfoot and Christine Power of Merck Serono Geneva Research Centre in Switzerland and their team isolated a family of tick saliva proteins that very selectively bind specific pro-inflammatory members of a protein family called chemokines.

Two of these proteins, which have been named evasins, produced no obvious allergic reaction and reduced inflammation when given to mice suffering from several conditions, including skin or joint inflammation and lung injury.