Talk:Immune system

What would an individual immunity be called? Ie: someone who is immune to, oh, say rattlesnake venom? That might be a bad example. But I of a better one. Does every person have to encounter the foreign objects to then gain immunity, or can some be inherited - or passed via the mother (that stuff that comes before milk starts up). If everyone has to encounter the foreign agents - what about children who eat peanut butter to early and become allergic to peanut (oils?)
~ender

Immunity obtained by passage of immunoglobulins from the mother (in utero or through breast feeding) is called "passive immunity". Immunity obtained by exposure to antigens is called "active immunity". An individual immunity is "specific immunity". Rattlesnake venom, however, is a toxin which produces its effects pharmacologically rather than immunologically. -- Someone else 19:40, 17 Aug 2003 (UTC)

That's the problem I was thinking of with my Venom example :\

I'm assuming this will all be explained in the article? :)

~ender 2003-08-17 13:37:MST

Only if someone gets ambitious<G>. Immunology makes my eyes glaze over. -- Someone else 20:38, 17 Aug 2003 (UTC)

However, you could become 'immune' to a particular snake venom by repeatedly exposing yourself to sub-lethal doses of venom. You'll raise antibodies that recognize and inactivate the venom. When you get anti-venom, for instance, it's purified antibodies to a particular snake venom that they obtained by repeatedly injecting some animal (horses, sometimes) with doses of snake venom that would not kill the horse.--fhayashi 13:10, 17 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Believe it or not, that is usually called an "individual immunity". Despite what you may think, (biological) science doesn't go out of its way to make up words for simple concepts.

Colostrum, as well as mother's milk, and foetal food all contain certain amounts of transmissible immunoglobulins, thus conferring immunity via vertical transmission.

Codes for antibodies are also inside the genome, as well as codes for other immune receptors that provide 'innate' aspects specific immunity, and 'specific' aspects of innate immunity. In fact, if you don't actually contain the right genes, you will never be able to raise antibodies to certain foreign agents--ZZ 02:37, 29 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I'm making some changes to reflect a more unbiased look at the duality of innate and adaptive immunity. There is nothing primitive or less specific in innate immunity compared to adaptive immunity. --Fhayashi 17:48, 17 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Immune system

This page is totally misguided, wrong, and out of date. Most of the information is incorrect. Please read a good immunology reference text to correct it.

Immune system

This page undergone an extensive rewrite since it's last peer review, mostly by myself, and I could really use some feedback on issues such as layout, flow, understandability, length, ect...

Thanks so much to anyone willing to read this article--DO11.10 21:45, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

• The lead of this article is too long, or may contain too many paragraphs. Please follow guidelines at WP:LEAD; be aware that the lead should adequately summarize the article.
• When writing standard abbreviations, the abbreviations should not have a 's' to demark plurality (change kms to km and lbs to lb).
• The lists, especially under "Surface Barriers and Mucosal Immunity", make the article harder to read; please convert these to prose (paragraph form).
• Per WP:MOS#Headings, headings generally do not start with the word "The". For example, ==The Biography== would be changed to ==Biography==.
• As per WP:MOS, please do not link words in headings.
• Per WP:MOS#Headings, headings generally should not repeat the title of the article. For example, if the article was Ferdinand Magellan, instead of using the heading ==Magellan's journey==, use ==Journey==.
• Please alphabetize the interlanguage links.
• Per WP:WIAFA, this article's table of contents (ToC) maybe too long- consider shrinking it down by merging short sections or using a proper system of daughter pages as per WP:SS.
• Watch for redundancies that make the article too wordy instead of being crisp and concise. (You may wish to try Tony1's redundancy exercises.)
  • While additive terms like “also”, “in addition”, “additionally”, “moreover”, and “furthermore” may sometimes be useful, overusing them when they aren't necessary can instead detract from the brilliancy of the article. This article has 22 additive terms, a bit too much.
  • Vague terms of size often are unnecessary and redundant - “some”, “a variety/number/majority of”, “several”, “a few”, “many”, “any”, and “all”. For example, “All pigs are pink, so we thought of a number of ways to turn them green.”
• As done in WP:FOOTNOTE, footnotes usually are located right after a punctuation mark (as recommended by the CMS, but not mandatory), such that there is no space inbetween. For example, the sun is larger than the moon [2]. is usually written as the sun is larger than the moon.[2]
• For an article about a very important system, I think more different references can be placed into the article; this is the first time I've seen notes for a single reference reach up to bb.

You may wish to browse through User:AndyZ/Suggestions for further ideas. (Ignore the <ref> tags above, this was generated mostly by JavaScript) Thanks, AZ _t 00:15, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for taking the time to read the article, and for your insightful comments. Your suggestions will definitely improve this article. It just goes to show that one's mind rarely surprises itself. Thanks again--DO11.10 21:09, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Of course, the major limitation of this article is its massive length. There are already a lot of subarticles, but you could make the TOC a bit more manageable by not having quite so many subsections - four layers deep is just too many. The subsections of "phagocytes", for example, could all be merged up into a few paragraphs in a single section; just because something has a main article doesn't mean it needs its own header and main template. Also, I'd strongly suggest creating intermediate-level articles on adaptive and innate immunity, which would shorten this article and make it more readable.

Other than the length, the content is good, though it could use some organization. The early sections are very listy and need prosifying (this will lengthen them, which strengthens the argument for splitting the article). There's also a couple of images that could be improved - for example, the image of a dendritic cell is too cartoony; a more detailed drawing or an image of a real cell would be more illustrative.

The references also need work. The extensive reliance on textbooks isn't so bad (though all those little notes to Immunobiology might better be formatted as citations of pages/chapters in a notes section, with the text listed in a separate reference section). But referencing other Wikipedia articles is generally bad; importing the relevant references makes them easier for a reader to track down. There are also a few uncited statements floating around; "B-cells may be named for the bursa of Fabricius, an organ unique to birds, where the cells were first found to develop" stood out. Opabinia regalis 01:22, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

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• Hello, DO11.10. I comment you on taking on such a broad subject. A good deal has been mentioned on formatting, so I'll focus a bit on content. Here are some suggestions:
  1. Innate immune system : There isn't much more than the briefest mention of the complement system. A thorough article on the immune system isn't complete without at least a small section describing it. Plus, the desciption of the innate immune system focuses almost entirely on its cellular aspects, giving an incomplete picture to the process (did you know, for exmaple, that there is mounting evidence that SLE is caused by a deficiency in c1q?)
  2. Autoimmunity and Hypersensitivity are two entirely different things. To lump them together in one section is not something I advise.

There is alot more work to be done, and I'll be happy to help when I get the chance. Unfortunately I sort of have my hands full at the moment. Hope these help; expect more in the near furture. – ClockworkSoul 05:36, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

---

Wow, so many great suggestions! Thank you both for your very helpful ideas. I have been reading up on WP:SS for a while, I as guessing that this would be the best way to split out Innate and acquired, do you agree?

It is funny that you mention the Bursa part... there was apparently a (somewhat) nasty discussion about that before I began editing this article, which is why I hesitantly left it in.

Great idea about the refs, although I also own Janeway 6th edition and Kuby, which basically has much of the same content, and I could include those as references also, I just really like the idea of pointing to online textbooks.

I actually did have a section about the complement system in the article, but I felt that a)it was difficult to find the right "place" in the innate system and b) that the article was getting too long, which I can see, other agree with. It appears that I will need to split the article. I think that then I can really give the complement system and hypersensitivity/allergy the attention they deserve.

How do you find the original piece on the complement system? Any suggestions, however small, would be appreciated. The complement system is is really not my forte.

Complement System

Main article: Complement system

The complement system is a biochemical cascade of the immune system that helps clear pathogens or mark them for destruction by other cells. The cascade is composed of many small plasma proteins, synthesized in the liver, primarily by hepatocytes, which work together to:

• trigger the recruitment of inflammatory cells.
• "tag" pathogens for destruction by other cells by opsonizing, or coating, the surface of the pathogen.
• disrupt the plasma membrane of an infected cell, resulting in cytolysis, and causing the death of the pathogen.

I agree that we need to make the complement system a more substantial part of this article. It really is one of the most effective and important mechanisms of the immunological response. I will try and sift through my 3rd year immunology notes for some useful information. -- JE.at.UWO^U|_T 20:27, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Elements of the complement cascade can be found in many species evolutionarily older than earlier than mammals including plants, birds, fish and some species of invertebrates.

Thanks again for the great comments--DO11.10 19:47, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Plants and other freaks of nature

This seems very anthrocentric. Not that any mainstream resources really help. I only learned earlier this year (final year of a bio-science degree) that plants actually had immune systems. Does anybody know much about plant immunity? (I don't)--ZayZayEM 08:56, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)

The mammalian immune systems have many similarities, and I think this page should only make a passing notion to the fact that other organisms also have immune systems. For all intents and purposes, the human immune system is the best studied. JFW | T@lk 22:07, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Peer review

Following the annoying VFD notice, I do think this page needs major overhaul. There is a lot of material with very little structure.

Some points:

• Start with a clear outline:
  • forms of immunity, e.g. specific vs. nonspecific)
  • organs involved
  • cell types involved
  • physiology (forms of immune reaction, e.g. anaphylactoid vs delayed-type, Th1 vs Th2)
  • pathology (autoimmunity, immune deficiency)
  • analysis of immune function
  • medical modulation of immune response (e.g. vaccination, immune suppression, cytokines)
• This outline can then be filled from a few reliable sources that are readily accessible to the average library visitor or internet user. Let's please avoid 400 references for all sorts of fringe POVs.
• We will get punished for making errors, not for leaving out tiny details. This article is only an overview, with pointers to subarticles of relevance.

Which authors would like to help? I'd love to, but my main contributions will probably not come until after April. JFW | T@lk 22:07, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I quickly glanced at the article and it does need some updating, which I plan to do. Some claims by the author of the VfD are wrong:

• B cells are named for bone marrow, as opposed to T cells that come from and proliferate in the thymus.

  Incorrect. The "B" originally stood for bursa of Fabricius, an organ in birds in which B cells mature. T cells do NOT "come from" the thymus -- they undergo development in the thymus, but, like all cells in the blood, they come from hematopoetic stem cells in the bone marrow. jdb ❋ 23:16, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

• Description of neutrophil is correct
• Innate section is lacking current information, but acquired seems correct

I think much of the information was taken from an older textbook or something, but it's not intentionally wrong or an embarassment. --jag123 16:00, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

• I disagree. As hysterical as the VfDer was, the article was in pretty bad shape. He certainly prompted me to make some changes. jdb ❋ 23:16, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

After actually reading the article, I have to agree with you jdb; it is in bad shape. Regarding B cells, I've seen many references to B standing for "bone marrow" and never (up until now) to bursa of fabricius. Do you have a reference as to who coined the term? I'm not arguing that it's false, but since the bone marrow "origin" is so commonly used, it'd be nice to settle this misconception. By the way, T cells do come from the thymus. A few migrate from the bone marrow into the thymus and proliferate, so that means that all of the T cells circulating in the blood actually come from the thymus. That's like saying osteoblasts don't come from the periosteum because their distant ancestors originated from marrow stromal cells. Don't be so pedantic. --jag123 12:15, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The answer to the question "what the B of B lymphocyte stands for?" is the following: The B term originally stood for bursa of Fabricius of the birds as correctly mentioned in a previous post. However since there's no such organ in mammals and these cells in mammals mature in the bone marrow it is not incorrect to say that in mammals the B stands for bone marrow.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.199.15.66 (talk • contribs) 2006-05-19t14:30:08z (UTC)

What is the immune system

What are we considering as the "immune system"? According to books I have at hand (Biology (6th ed) by Campbell & Reece, and Concise Histology, by Blood & Fawcett), the immune system does not include first and second line of defenses. Immunobiology by Janeway does mention innate immunity, but doesn't explicitly say this is part of the immune system, only host defenses. Therefore, according to my definition, this would mean moving a lot of information (such as physical barrier, anti-microbial proteins, innate immunity) out of the article and sticking with humoral and cell-mediated responses, which is barely mentionned. Perhaps an article on body defenses or somethinig like could be created as overview of every aspect, including the physical barrier, inflammation, innate immunology, etc. Input anyone? --jag123 13:01, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Janeway, 6th ed. has an entire chapter on innate immunity, which is most definitely part of the "immune system." (Any dicdef will include it.) Innate immunity (acidic skin, macrophages with TLRs, complement) is what protects us from nearly all pathogens; adaptive immunity only handles the rare few that survive those defenses. Any article that purports to discuss the I.S. is negligent if it doesn't discuss innate immunity. On a related note, I'm glad you've been cleaning up the more florid parts of the article, but I'd appreciate it if you'd put back the areas that discuss non-human immunity (you snipped a paragraph on bacterial restriction enzymes, for instance, which definitely qualifies. The link between immunology and REs, a standard tool in biology, is interesting in itself). Comparative material aids understanding. jdb ❋ 16:45, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

A book on immunobiology might be negligent if it didn't discuss innate immunity and all the other lines of defense, but this isn't a book, it's an article on the immune system, not the body's defenses. On your related note, there is no way bacterial restriction enzymes compares to the human immune system. REs (and their use as a tool in biochemistry/immunology) is quite interesting, but that doesn't mean it's relevant here. Vomiting and diarrhea is an effective way for the body to get rid of pathogens in the stomach and gut, does that belong here? What about the role of tree bark? At this point, I have three reliable sources (two books from above, plus Webster's dictionnary) that define "immune system" in the same way, so apart from Janeway's chapter that talks about a bunch of stuff, do you have any other reasons why the information you re-added should be kept, or why the article should discuss primary or secondary line of defenses? --jag123 17:38, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

There are three separate issues here: the inclusion of innate immunity, the inclusion of infection resistence in general, and the inclusion of non-human immune systems. Regarding innate immunity: you can't explain adaptive immunity without explaining innate immunity; we can't have an article that purports to explain the "Immune system" that doesn't discuss innate immunity. Regarding the general infection resistence (such as skin) issue: the immune system writ broadly is everything involved in separating self from non-self. This includes the acidic qualities of the skin (which evolved that way for a reason). There's no need to expound upon it, but it's not something we can omit and say that we have a good summary article. Burn victims who lack functioning skin die rapidly of infection -- your T and B cells can't save you from an onslaught like that. Finally, regarding the non-human immune systems issue: An immune system is a set of mechanisms for distinguishing between self and non-self, and eliminating (some of) the latter. Humans have a bunch of specialized organs and cell types involved in this process; bacteria have (among other things) restriction enzymes. As it stood before your edits, this was an article on immune systems in general; if you want an article that talks about the human immune system in particular, you're welcome to start Human immune system. jdb ❋ 19:43, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Your definition of immune system comes from where, exactly? The definition I'm using doesn't mention "human", so I don't see why I need to create another article elsewhere because you don't like what I'm saying. [I separated the "human" from "innate" issues above for a reason. Don't mix them up; it muddies the water. jdb ❋ 21:15, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)] I don't get it; this article gets nomatined on VfD because it's filled with wrong information, and your solution is to keep the wrong information in there? I don't really see the problem of discussing acquired immunity without having to mention innate immunity. The body encounters a pathogen and "learns" to recognise it. Is it absolutely crucial to explain how the pathogen got there or why it wasn't terminated earlier? Will readers be completly lost if that info isn't mentionned? I don't believe so. It seems most people associate "immune system" with everything that defends the body but that's simply not true. --jag123 20:13, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

If you "don't really see the problem of discussing acquired immunity without having to mention innate immunity", then I think you ought to read a recent book on immunology. Your (adaptive IS) B and T cells are nowhere without the innate IS. Your T cells are useless without antigen-presenting cells to activate them; your B cells are crippled without T-cell mediated somatic hypermutation and isotype switching. Your APCs are part of the innate immune system; the mechanisms they use (TLRs, for instance) to detect danger are part of the innate immune system. jdb ❋ 21:15, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

As a follow-up, Janeway's Immunobiology, 6th ed., p.765, says "The immune system is the name used to describe the tissues, cells, and molecules involved in adaptive immunity, or sometimes the totality of host defense mechanisms." So either of our interepretations would pass muster. I'm inclined to err on the side of a broader definition -- since we can explain everything in linked articles, the main Immune system article shouldn't be terribly detailed about any mechanism, adaptive or not. jdb ❋ 21:36, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Please don't insert stuff in the middle of my posts. I don't even see where I supposedly "muddled" the water. My definition passes muster according to (now) four sources; yours passes muster according to one, and only because the author added "sometimes". I'm very well aware of the role of the innate and the adaptive immune system and I don't need to go read a good book to see the connection. Everything in the whole body is interconnected. Perhaps we should talk about the heart, since it pumps the blood, which is vital for distributing these cells around the body. Of course, without blood, there's no lymph, another important factor. I can see the title now: "The crucial role of actin proteins in the immune system: A critical component in the muscle contraction mechanism used by the organ responsible for the proper and complete delivery throughout the body of the medium used by immune system cells as transport." Both can exist seperately. If they couldn't, they wouldn't be divided into "innate" and "adaptive". The article on "immune system" should not discuss restriction enzymes, primary or secondary lines of defense. I can understand that maybe "sometimes" people define "immune system" as including all of those, but that's really not good enough of a reason to include it here. I can read a hundred books on immunology but until the definition changes, I'm not going to change my mind. There's absolutely nothing wrong with moving that information into another article, such as Host defense, where people can mention any and all aspects of defense mechanisms, whether vertebrate, microbial, vegetable, whatever. --jag123 23:00, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I suggest that you take a deep breath. This isn't a contest. jdb ❋ 01:33, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

My take is that this article should be on the tertiary immunity of mammals. Would it suffice to mention the concept that there are various methods of Host defense that could be considered part of its more generic definition (Plant immunity could also be put in here)? Then state that this article focuses on the immunity of mammals. Also I'd strongly challenge that the human immune system is the most well studied, because a lot of what we know has come from vivisection based research. The immune system of the mouse may be the most well studied. --Volantares 1:50, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

Expansion request

After reading the article, I have some unanswered questions:

• It's commonly believed that being in a cold environment leads to impaired immunity. Whether or not this is true, the state of research on this topic should be included.
• This short NPR piece implies that drier air dehydrates mucus, reducing the effectiveness of immune response. Is this well documented?
• A version of this article back in January raised the question of how the immune system knows not to attack the offspring during pregnancy, but it looks like that material was entirely deleted. Inquiring minds would like to know.
• The section on "Other factors that affect immune response" made some very vague claims. I started to clean it up, but it still has some gaps. It will also need references to Wikipedia articles or other sources that document its claims. We still need to know, for example:
  • What types of "poor eating habits" reduce immune response? Just deficiencies? If so, which?
  • What types of radiation cause immune problems? The article that is currently linked to is just a disambiguation page.
  • What toxins other than cigarette smoke can cause immune problems?

-- Beland 03:32, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

I'm just going to jump on the bandwagon here and list a question too... :)

• What different types of reactions do humans have the consequent time(s) they are infected with a specific pathogen. Obviously antibodies are generally developed, but how common is it for infections to manifest themselves the second (or even third) time they are caught? Are the symptoms generally not as significant or lengthy? How does this differ between viral/bacterial infections?

I think this sort of stuff should be covered in Immune_system#Adaptive_immune_system (that's where I looked for it, at least). If the above question is covered in this or any other article, I think it should at least be referenced in the Adaptive Immune System section. Or if it's a silly question, please tell me why (cos otherwise I'll never learn!). --Aidan 12:44, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

[Pictures]

[T]his si[te] needs pics[,] lots of them[.]— Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.122.97.182 (talk • contribs) 2006-04-25t03:27:12z (UTC)

Needs Cleanup

I made a bunch of changes to the page, but it still needs a lot more. I'll try to do a little here and there when I get a chance, but if someone else could jump in that would be great too. I agree we need some pictures.--ColForbin 03:11, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

I tagged it for cleanup because it appears as if someone's copied and pasted not only text but also some HTML code or something. It's spread throughout certain parts of the article. --contingency40 07:37, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Why did someone copy and paste all of that text? Simple links to the pages in question would have sufficed! I'll try to fix it, but it sure is annoying. --ColForbin 23:42, 31 July 2006 (UTC)