What is immunology?
What is immunology?
Immunology is the medical specialty that focuses on the study of the immune system. It is an extremely vital field of biological and medical sciences. The immune system provides our body with protection against infection by actually rejecting and fighting against foreign viruses as well as bacteria. When the immune system is malfunctioning, it can lead to disease or even attack the body.
Certain diseases triggered by illnesses of the immune system can actually be caused by what is known as immunodeficiency. In this case, certain parts of the immune system are unable to provide either enough response or autoimmunity and the immune system ends up over responding, thereby causing harm to its host cells.
The immune system contributes to infection in three major ways. They include:
Activation
The immune system could be active when combatting diseases and increasing an immune response, which leads to fever, swelling and eventually, the offending pathogen’s removal. As a result, the immune system retains an excellent memory of that specific pathogen also, enabling the immune system to increase a quick and even an increasingly effective reaction to that pathogen just in case it decides to infect another time.
Immunodeficiency
In this case, the immune system may not be functioning well enough, making our body to have less power to combat infections. Immunodeficiency could come about due to either the absence of an element of the immune system, or there are other factors that are preventing it from working correctly - for instance cancer, medications and HIV infection.
Hypersensitivity
The immune system might be hypersensitive, i.e. improperly active against the autoimmunity (normal body) or against substances which are harmless (allergy). Rheumatoid arthritis, coeliac disease and systemic lupus erythematosis are some of the autoimmunity ailments. Allergy includes illnesses like asthma, anaphylaxis and hayfever.
