The immune response to an allergen can deal with toxic substances, which without it would just kill us immune response to an allergen can deal with toxic substances, which without it would just kill us.
The stronger your immune system reacts to a bee sting, so perhaps ceeding your resistance to bee venom. (Photo by Shutterstock.)
The intrusion into the body of something alien immunity can give two answers: one occurs when the appearance of bacteria and viruses, the immune system destroys the cells together with the slain, and the other starts with the appearance of a large parasite that must be expelled. The answer of the second type - is a cough, runny nose, sneezing, diarrhea, etc., accompanied by the synthesis of immunoglobulin E (IgE).
Many scientists believe that the antiparasitic immune response in modern humans evolved in an allergic reaction, which in the world of parasites without this immune response is triggered when a completely harmless substances such as pollen and other things. However, researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine (USA) came to a different conclusion in their experiments, they were convinced of the usefulness of allergy.
Stephen Galli (Stephen Galli) and his colleagues experimented with bee venom, which is known to be a strong allergen. Scientists moderate dose of poison was injected (approximately equal to two bees) mice that were susceptible to immune response of either the first or the second type. And those and other then elaborated allergic IgE-antibodies.
Three weeks later, the same animals were taken almost a lethal dose of bee venom. Simultaneously, the same dose was given to mice of both lines, which is not treated to the substance. As the researchers write in Immunity, a maximum of deaths was among those to whom this poison was administered, but the lines of mice predisposed to a second immune response, survived still more.
Of the mice that were given to this poison, survived more than half. But again among those who were predisposed to an immune response the first type, 66% remained alive, and mice of the second type - 80%.
The researchers concluded that it was an allergic antibody type E helped to survive the survivors. Moreover, these antibodies protected, even those who do not synthesize them: such animals have benefited injection of IgE, obtained from mice in which these antibodies appeared after treatment with bee venom.
Another group of researchers led by Medzhitova Ruslan (Ruslan Medzhitov) School of Medicine, Yale University (USA) Make sure that the body's immune system reacts to the allergenic enzyme PLA2, which is found in the venoms of snakes, spiders and other unpleasant creatures, and which has the ability to damage the membrane. It appears, to the authors of this work in the same Immunity, immune cytokines related to the response of the second type, help to eliminate damage caused by PLA2. That is, as we see, useless the second type of immune response again proves very handy.
Perhaps such an immune response is actually protecting us from toxins and exhausting allergic symptoms - this is just an unpleasant enclosure. However, as some skeptics have to fully believe this hypothesis, it is necessary to make sure that allergies really are more resistant to toxins than those people who are fortunate enough to live without allergies.
Also, do not forget that allergies can be up to anaphylactic shock, which can result in very sad. Should I even anaphylactic shock looked upon as a defense against toxins? In general, these two works, for all its originality, leave more questions about the role of allergies in our lives than it answers.
in the wake of the Stanford University School of Medicine, ScienceNOW, Shutterstock, compulenta.computerra.ru
Allergy Planet (BBC Documentary)
We are in the grip of an allergy epidemic. 50 years ago one in 30 were affected, but in Britain today it is closer to one in three. Why this should be is one of modern medicine's greatest puzzles.
In search of answers, Horizon travels round the globe, from the remotest inhabited island to the polluted centres of California and the UK. We meet sufferers and the scientists who have dedicated their lives trying to answer the mystery of why we are becoming allergic to our world.
