GREETINGS everyone. Well, I suspect you’re a little tired of all the gloom and doom of disaster scenarios, so I decided this week to dip into the medical file. Now that can be pretty ‘gloom and doom’ too, but this week we’re going to learn some good stuff!

When I was a little kid, I was sick a lot and I remember how my mother used to worry when my fever went up. Well, new data from researchers based at the Department of Immunology at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, N.Y., suggests that the next time you’re sick, you may want to thank your fever for helping you fight off the infection. That's because the scientists have found evidence that elevated body temperature helps certain types of immune cells work better.

We’ve known since ancient times that the body grows hot when it’s coping with infection and inflammation. Even cold-blooded animals like reptiles move to warmer places when they’re sick, so immunologists are devoting more attention to this interesting response.

They’ve discovered that a lymphocyte that destroys virus-infected cells and tumor cells works better when body temperature goes up. The temperature increase changes the lymphocyte’s membranes and makes the cell more efficient.

The researchers injected two groups of mice with an antigen and raised the body temperature of one group by 2 degrees. The warmed mice showed greater numbers of the virus and tumor destroying lymphocyte.

Having a fever might be uncomfortable, but this research shows a fever is part of an effective immune response. We had thought the main benefit of fever was that the microbes that infect us simply can't replicate as well at higher temperatures, but this new work also suggests the entire immune system response might be enhanced when our temperatures rise.

The researchers say very high body temperatures are dangerous and should be controlled, but this study shows we may need to reconsider how and when to treat most mild fevers.

Now, are you ready for the most important scientific news to be published in a long time? I can’t believe this study didn’t make worldwide headlines.

Katherine Hepburn once said: “What you see before you is the result of a lifetime of chocolate.” New evidence published by researchers at University of California, San Diego suggests she may have been right. What??? Chocolate makes you skinny???

The researchers examined dietary and other information provided by approximately 1,000 adult men and women from San Diego, for whom weight and height had been measured.

They found that adults who ate chocolate several days a week had a lower body mass index than those who ate chocolate less often. The size of the effect was modest but the effect was "significant" because it was larger than could be explained by chance. This was despite the fact that those who ate chocolate more often did not eat fewer calories (they ate more), nor did they exercise more. Indeed, no differences in behaviors were identified that might explain the finding as a difference in calories taken in versus calories expended.

The authors think that modest, regular chocolate consumption might be calorie-neutral. In other words, the metabolic benefits of eating modest amounts of chocolate might lead to reduced fat deposition per calorie and approximately offset the added calories consumed when eating the chocolate.

Eating chocolate can make you skinny! Quite possibly the best science news I’ve reported all year!