Immune system is your body’s defense mechanism to protect from infectious organism and other living object invaded your body. The body reacts through several cellular immune response, and immune system attacks those foreign objects which may cause disease. Immune system consisted of network cells, skins, tissue and organs which work closely to protect body. How immune system works?
Immune system is so important for us to survive since we are surrounded by virus, fungus, parasite and bacteria which always trying to break into our body. In the absence of immune systems, our body would be an interesting choice for those germs to live and raise their successors. Why it is so interesting? Because it is full of nutrients, warm, wet, and this is the ideal condition for them to live and survive. Some of those microbes can make you sick or even cause of death.
Now let us take a look on how our immune system works. The common general concept when thinking of immune system is leucocytes or white blood. This blood component protects and destroys organism which it thinks are foreign objects and may caused disease. Basically there are two types of leukocytes:
Phagocytes: leukocytes cells that destroy organism which entered our body. Lymphocytes: leukocytes cells that grant body to remember and recognize previous invaders and then later will help body to destroy them.
Neutrophil is the most common phagocytes. The main responsibility of neutrophill is to fight bacteria. Increasing neutrophil quantity in blood is one indicator that patients are suspected being infected by bacteria. Beside neutrophill, other types of phagocytes are having jobs to fight unique and different types of invader.
There are two kinds of lymphocytes: B lymphocytes and T lymphocytes. Both are created in bone marrow. If lymphocyte cells are matured in bone marrow it will then become B cells. If those cells leave bone marrow to thymus gland, then it becomes T Cells. Even though both are originating from the same sources and aging separately, actually both have different role in immune systems. B cells are more likely to search for invaders and sending defenses and blockade them. On the other hand T cells epitopes are playing more active role. It immediately destroys invaders that being identified as foreign objects by our immune systems.
When our body detected intruder, in this case antigen, it then responded by several cells. These cells then awake B lymphocytes to actively boost antibody production. Antibody is proteins substance, with the ability to recognize and bind to foreign toxic, molecules or pathogens such as bacteria or viruses. Antigen antibody reaction works in a way that antibody will lock to only distinguishing specific antigens.
Some important thing to note that once antibodies existed in our body it will continue to do so. If the same antigen is presented to body immune system antibodies in the future, antibody will immediately and intelligently response to it. Think of someone who got chickenpox. That person wouldn’t be getting infected again because the antigen is being recognized by antibody. This also explains how immunization works. Once active immunization shots given to body, the antigen (being less accented in lab) won’t make the person sick, but still our body wills response to it by creating immune system antibodies. In the future, human antibody will react accordingly to those specific diseases. Antigen antibody reaction is our body natural way to protect itself.
Hopefully by taking a brief journey to Leucocytes and its component we can have a better understanding on how our body immune systems works. B lymphocyte, T lymphocyte and antibody production, all of these specialized immune system cells are part of defense systems to protect our body against disease.
