What really happens when a virus enters the body

[HuckleB]

What really happens when a virus enters the body

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=29777

"A well-respected researcher who is now a chief of an immunology laboratory of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has rocked the boat in the past few years for the experts in the understanding of the autoimmune system.

NIH's Polly Matzinger has developed the "danger model," suggesting that the immune system is more concerned with damage detected on the basis of a biological cell's death than with the introduction of foreign invaders, such as viruses. If Matzinger is correct, then decades of scientific and medical diagnostic thinking could be in jeopardy.

As immunologists consider the relatively new concept, a new NIH grant, awarded to Amy Bell, an electrical and computer engineer (ECE), and Karen Duca, a research assistant professor at the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute (VBI), both of Virginia Tech, could answer some of the questions about the human body's responses to viruses. Viruses cause a number of diseases, from the common cold, to herpes, to AIDS. Even some types of cancer have been linked to viruses.

Prior to Matzinger's model, the common assumption was that the body's cells recognize substances or germs that do not come from within the body. The recognition triggers the immune system's attempt to eliminate the invader. What the immune system actually does, according to Matzinger, is discriminate between things that are dangerous and things that are not. And it does this by defining anything that does damage as dangerous. Through this selectivity process, the immune system does not respond to things that don't do damage.

..."

[Maple]

1. Heresy lives!

So, apparently, does fresh air.

[Spinzonner]

2. Makes a lot of sense

since our bodies are filled with symbiotic species of bacteria and other invaders that are relatively benign. No point it getting the body all riled up over something that does no harm, especially since the mechanisms themselves are not trotally trouble free.

[trotsky]

5. Great point.

The body would be fighting an unwinnable war if it attacked every unrecognized protein or organism it encountered.

[rman]

3. so, transplanted organs can do damage?

it is due to the immune system that transplanted organs are rejected, is it not?

[trotsky]

6. Just guessing here...

but maybe the body is detecting that something has damaged "its" organ cells? (The cells now have different DNA than the immune system.)

[Celebration]

4. Thanks

Very interesting article. So he says that since the immune system attacks and kills a virus, the death of all of the replicated viruses sends a signal that the body is in danger? Then the "danger" signal causes the body to overreact and attack itself? I guess I am trying to restate this in my own word because I truly want to understand the concept. "I AM IN DANGER BECAUSE OF THE SIGNALS I AM GETTING FROM ALL THESE DYING BIOLOGICAL ENTITIES" causes me to attack my own body? Someone help me out with the missing links here.