The immunology is a branch of biological research that is strongly focused on medical applications. Its subject is the immune system, especially that of mammals and humans. Findings and products from immunological research help in infection biology, oncology, allergology and transplant medicine.
What is the Immunology?
Immunologists study the immune system. The immune system of humans and mammals gives an innate immune response and an adaptive immune response, which reacts specifically to pathogens and stimuli that are perceived as foreign. Immunochemistry, immunogenetics, psychoneuroimmunology, immunopathology and clinical pathology are important areas of immunology.
Immunochemistry has helped to better understand the structure of antigens and antibodies, as well as the biochemical aspects of immune responses. The detection of antibodies is important in diagnosing infections. Antibodies are also used as markers in immunohistochemistry. Immunogenetics deals with the genetics of genetic autoimmune diseases such as type I diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn's disease or multiple sclerosis. Immunopathology and clinical immunology investigate disorders of the immune system in sick patients.
The spectrum of immune pathologies is wide and ranges from allergies, the formation of tumors, rare autoimmune diseases to AIDS. Psychoneuroimmunology is a new field of research that assumes a great influence of the psyche on the immune defense.
Treatments & therapies
AIDS, a serious disease of the immune system, occurs because the HI viruses that cause the disease attack the immune system's T-helper cells. The task of the T helper cells is to coordinate the immune response and antibody production. The infected T helper cells are then missing for the immune response.
Instead, they produce new HI viruses themselves. Although the still healthy T helper cells produce antibodies and memory cells against HIV, they do not prevent the onset of AIDS. The HI viruses in the body mutate very quickly and are no longer recognized by the antibodies. The result is a weakening and ultimately failure of the immune system. Patients take a variety of antiviral drugs for treatment. These drugs intervene in various biochemical reactions in virus replication. The multitude of medicines is necessary to avoid the development of resistance of the HI viruses.
New antiviral drugs are constantly being developed that protect patients better and better against the rapidly mutating HI viruses. In transplant medicine, it is not the sick but the healthy immune system that is the problem. After an organ or tissue transplant, the patient can easily develop rejection reactions. That is why doctors use immunosuppressants to weaken the immune system. Some autoimmune diseases and particularly severe asthma can also be treated with immunosuppressive therapy. However, the health disadvantages are very high: The patients carry an increased risk of infection for all kinds of diseases.
Malignant tumor cells multiply and spread more easily in the body and sometimes lead to cancer. Interestingly, these are exactly the side effects of AIDS. There are also treatment methods for cancer that come from immunology. If cancer develops with the weakening of the immune system, strengthening the immune system helps to heal cancer. Cancer immunotherapy refers to the treatment of cancer with active immunization with cancer vaccines and passive immunization with vaccination of antibodies. Vaccinations are part of immunological research.
The annual flu vaccinations, which are particularly recommended for older people and people with a weakened immune system, usually contain split vaccines, i.e. inactivated parts of the influenza virus envelope that challenge an immune response without infecting the patient. As with the much more dangerous HI viruses, the high rate of mutation, also known as antigen drift, is a problem with influenza viruses. Therefore, affected risk groups renew the flu vaccination annually.
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➔ Medicines to strengthen the defense and immune systemDiagnosis & examination methods
Since the immune system reacts to irritation from antigens by producing antibodies, the detection of specific antibodies that indicate infection by certain pathogens is a common method of medical diagnosis. Laboratories routinely use immunassays to detect the presence of antibodies against HIV, hepatitis C, all other types of hepatitis and the cytomegalovirus.
Inexpensive search tests quickly lead to a result that, with a not very small probability, is falsely positive. If the test result is positive, the doctor asks for a more complex, time-consuming, and more expensive detection test to dispel any doubts about the diagnosis.
The pregnancy test strip is also an immunoassay. There are also immunoassays in sports medicine for the detection of doping substances or other drugs. The HIV test is an ELISA immunoassay ("enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay"). For this purpose, an experimental set-up is set up in which the centrifuged blood serum to be tested is brought together with HIV antigens and artificially prepared, biochemically luminous HIV antibodies. If antibodies are now present in the blood serum, the light signal in the assay decreases because the artificially prepared antibodies are displaced from their positions on the antigens. This leads to a positive result.
The strip pregnancy test is a lateral flow test. The basic mechanism here is also a characteristic color change due to an antigen-antibody bond: human chorionic gonadotropin (short: hCG), a peptide hormone, is produced in the placenta and indicates pregnancy. HCG binds to labeled hcG antibodies on the test strip. This complex migrates on the test strip and eventually stains anti-Fc antibodies in the control zone if the result is positive.
Medical diagnostics is benefiting greatly from the great development in biotechnology; new devices and methods appear in quick succession. Doctors who are up-to-date in the field read a lot and attend international symposia.
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