Fundamentals of the Human Body Immunity System

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

2. Part I
2.1 Historical Development
2.2 Rationale of immunology in health promotion
2.3 A Public Health Perspective in the Trends of Infectious Disease Prevalence

3. Part II
3.1 The Components of the Body Immune system
3.2 The Lymphoid System

4. Part III
4.1 Types of Body Immunity
4.2 Factors associated to immune response System efficiency
4.3 Antigens, antibodies and the complementary system
4.3.1 Antigens
4.3.2 Antibodies
4.3.3 The complementary system

5. Part IV
5.1 Preventive health care
5.2 Strategic implementation of preventive health care
5.3 The Public Health Capstone in the Immunology Paradigm:
5.3.1 Recommendations

Conclusion

Bibliography

Course Description

Immunology as applied to public health. Emphasis is upon applications of immunology and immunological techniques used in surveillance, prevention, and control of public health problems.

The primary goals of this course are to familiarize the student with basic principles of, and recent developments in, the immunology of infectious and parasitic diseases and to develop a better understanding of the applications of immunology as a discipline in public health. Students who successfully complete this course will understand and be able to utilize the principles of detection, diagnosis, prevention and control of infectious disease through immunologic means.

Objectives

The learning outcomes of this course study include knowledge and understanding of a range of environmental topics as well as intellectual, practical and transferable skills and competences, as detailed below;

1. Understanding and apply principles of human immunology as it relates to infectious disease control in public health practice.
2. To proficiently apply fundamental principles of immunologic techniques to discriminate between and select appropriate methodology for diagnosis and prevention of infectious disease.
3. To comprehend with precise ability to compare and contrast the different immunologic reactions to pathogenic microorganisms in the human host and understand the relevance.

1. Introduction

In so many cases, we have been accustomed to the phrase “prevention is better than cure” yet in so many cases, we find ourselves as victims of disease that in so many instances, we are not sure how we came to contract them but instead the next step we embark on is to treat them.

It does not require extensive knowledge to realize that our body systems have inbuilt immune mechanisms by which humans survive the prevalent infections caused by the common bacteria located in almost every environment of man’s involvement. The fact of immunity is not an artificial health aspect built on man’s innovations in science but rather a natural fundamental of human life and therefore this provides the basis of preventive health and immunization.

Body immunity refers to the process or phenomenon through or by which the living body system is capable of identifying, isolating the foreign intruding harmful microorganisms and destroy or disarm them of the toxins that would be hazardous to the normal functioning of the body. The ability of the body to activate immunity against harmful microbes determines the health status of an individual and this is the foundation of immunology which is a perspective study directed against infectious disease spread in human communities.

Immunology, which is basic subject in medical sciences, finds its purpose along with microbiology, infectious disease control. In consortium with these medical subjects, immunology is regarded as the study of the fundamental physiological body components (molecules, tissues, cells, organs and systems) that are responsible of isolating foreign harmful bodies and disposing them out. The significance of immunology in the health science world is that it explores the common trends of disease emergence with an intention not of epidemiological importance but far more to devise vaccination, which can is applicable to prevent it from continuity.

The foundations of immunology can be traced from the early scientists such as Edward Jenner 1796, and Neisser 1879 that studied the response of the human body towards foreign organisms and the first inoculation of the human pathogen respectively. On to these contributors also pasture and the germ theory movement scientists can be considered as pillars in the establishing the basis and concepts of the subject of body immunity (York, 1996)

Through this conceptual and systematic study of immunology, the fundamental constituents of human immunity system, their functional pathways, regeneration, and replacement are analyzed. The study paper also entails the significance of immunology in the public health strategies of reducing health inequalities and disparities in the international community through international conventions on health policy structuring such as immunization are idealized.

2. Part I

Foundations and concepts of immunology

2.1 Historical Development

It was in the 19^th centuries, the apocalypse period due to the deadly smallpox disease in Europe that Edward Jenner realized the ability of helping the body immunity system by artificial means to fight foreign bodies that could intrude into humans with infection i.e. bacteria. Jenner practically analyzed that the dairy maids had another form of cowpox which was of less danger at least with fatal end results as rapid as the smallpox and then by isolating this less weaker cowpox after obtaining samples from its victims.

Then the cowpox sample was latter introduced into the blood stream of normal individual from the hand and this caused blisters and scaly developments at the region of the skin from where the sample introduced. Surprisingly after two months the same individual was inoculated with the sample of the detrimental smallpox disease from patients and the results showed no devastating clinical effects in the tested person.

Onto this experiment it was idealized that the body had developed immunity to smallpox due to the fast infection of the cowpox which is almost of the same family. This also indicated that the body developed defending cells and anti-smallpox anti-biotics from within hence these were used to destroy the future patterns of the same likelihood.

The body was able to duplicate anti-bodies and anti-biotics of its own naturally using the post inflectional trends and hence therefore if all the disease pathogens can be inoculated in the laboratory by man then immunity will be a walkover. The disease causing pathogens are of different characteristics and these require different treatment for culturing artificially and this made more studies necessary in microbiology and serology. The experimental findings and achievements of Edward Jenner aroused more speculation and created more curiosity in the science field of disease treatment through which more discoveries were made by persons like Neisser.

By the year of 1879, Neisser was able to artificially isolate the first human pathogen gonococcus (EPHTI) and this achievement led to the production of the first definite human body antigen due to isolation of the diphtheria bacilli by Klebs and Loeffler. However, more scientific discoveries were made on disease and antitoxins that disarm the dangers of the pathogens in the body for the common disease trends of the time which also still today have a great significance in the medical field and health pursuits. The increasing discoveries by this time also called for more inventions of scientific tools such as microscopes and inoculating equipment in the laboratory field and more chiefly raised more awareness the cause of body immunity and how it works.

2.2 Rationale of immunology in health promotion

The epidemiology of the disease in the current world of health shows radical trends that must be interrupted or rather the hope of survival for the weak immune human systems should be forgotten. Nevertheless, this fact is proved by not only the explosion or emergence of new diseases but the fact that most of these disease pathogens are becoming more resilient even to the new drugs manufactured.

This is an area causing great threats and fear yet its effect is a silent killer that the world may take long to realize not until the scientific evidence for these possibilities and developments are made public for the entire world to know. The common diseases that used to be treated the normal traditional methods of common anti-biotics have strengthened and doubled in the resilience causing the need to develop better studies and discoveries through this kind of eruptions could possibly be terminated or averted.

More still, there is an increased emergence and eruption of mass killing or apocalypse epidemics most especially in the poor states and yet most of these are due to simple traits of pathogens caused by common problems of hygiene and nutrition. For instance, Ebola and cholera epidemics that erupted in the central and south central Uganda claimed the lives of innocent children and even health workers simply because the health sector was caught unaware hence the prevalence of the disease accumulated at unexpected degrees in the urban areas. What immunology does is to equip the health sector with the manual requirements and efficient technicalities in handling such scenarios after research thereby implementing preventive measures and immediate sensitization of the public. It is very shocking that the sensitization of the public about the sanitation causes of cholera was provided 3weeks after the eruption of the disease.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in the Alma-Ata Russia convention on world health programme laid strategies to combat health disparities in the international community and promote healthcare and nine strategies were identified to be chief capstones in this venture;

Objectives and strategies of the Alma-Ata Russia world health care convention (1978)

1. The availability and adequate access to water by the mass
2. Accessing safe sanitation
3. Adequate and healthy nutrition
4. Immunization against the killer diseases
5. Easy and quick treatment for cuts and common disease
6. Family planning advice, maternal and child care
7. Public health sensitization or education in regard to healthy nutrition and preventive health methods
8. Advocacy for community participation in decision making in regard to preventive health planning
9. The training of village health workers to diagnose and proficiently treat common illness and injuries

This world healthcare convention aimed at achieving world health equality through the strategies by the year 2000 though one of the great blows that have tremendously compromised this plan is the eruption of new patterns and traits of disease infection.

Conceptually it can be postulated that health complications in humans are mainly of physical, infection and psychological which rarely claims life as compared to the former. However, among these, the infection factor contributes 89% of the hospitaliseable cables and yet some times the physical deformities lead to infection thereby indicating that almost 93% of the death cases are due to disease infection and the rest being accidental cases. This postulation is of great significance and it should be used to in order to locate and establish the role of the immunology paradigm in the pursuit of health promotion.

Most of the strategies that promulgated from the health convention places the prevention strategies to an Epi-center whereas those aimed at treating are regarded as secondary and policy oriented. On reckoning the national GDP for the majority of the states in the world it is discovered that 70 of these nations when picked at random at least lie below the poverty line and on estimating the economic statistics it is surprising to discover that 60% of the natives in such states have a very low gross per capita income. These individuals survive on almost 1$ per day or at least as less as 500$ per annum hence implying the treatment of even common diseases is not budgeted for yet when there is disease influx other utilities such as food, clothing have to be fore gone. This embarrassing economic status of the world’s largest population is another cardinal factor that calls immunology preferably places immunology among the remedies that the world has to achieve health prevalence and enable sustainable development.

The naturally underlying foundations of body immunity such as breast feeding in the early infants and healthy diet or nutrition for both the adults and infants have been greatly decapitated from everyday life. The fact that the best a mother can give to the baby is breast feeding has become of no meaning and regarded as old fashioned method and replaced with food extracts from factories and others preserved with chemicals that will later achieve little in boosting efficient body immunity. This deteriorating trend can be attributed to poor and inadequate sensitization from the health sector about these fundamental health facts which has left the public ignorant and hence helping the prevalence of poor immune and disease infection.

2.3 A Public Health Perspective in the Trends of Infectious Disease Prevalence

The notorious prevalence of infectious diseases have for the past centuries become an emblem of irresistible familiarity even to extent to extents total purging livelihoods in the prominent parts of the globe. Consider for instance the yield of the Yersinia Pestis that caused the extinction of almost a third of medieval Europe’s total population from which the disease eruption was referred to as the “black death”. Infectious disease also traversed across the military maneuvers in the ancient civilizations causing considerable due to diseases such Dysentery and Typhus which once culminated into napoleon’s retreat from conquering Russia after realizing that the effect of the typhus disease was even more devastating than the blows from the opponent forces.

In addition, the challenges can be remembered from the effects of the Yellow Fever which happened during the wars of French conquest in Cuba, the Smallpox invasions of the Europe’s new world, Malaria infestation of the black continent that almost caused the racial and geographical patterns with the rest of the globe and so on. The list can stretch further even beyond unbelievable boundaries and the estimates of the number of death caused due to these disease emergences are in billions and billions across the offset generations of human existence.

Therefore, the shockingly high morbidity and mortality rates in the globe are caused by the infectious disease such as pneumonia which has been identified as the fifth leading cause of death among most disease yet and also leading among those connected to infection. It is estimated that by the year 2002, about 53 million deaths happened and estimated that at least 70% of these were due to infections.

These records are symbols of a worsening situation in the health aspects of our world and making it worse is the continual strengthening of the incurable diseases or perhaps those whose treatment vaccines have not been fully accomplished among which is the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). The effects of the HIV/AIDS virus are of great far reaching extents and damaging not only the health trends all over the but also into other spheres of human involvement the worst has been felt via the social aspect. According to the word health report from the WHO in 20006 which was also the 25^th anniversary for the AIDS epidemic it stated that almost 40million persons are living with HIV/AIDS and so far at least 25 have already died.

The African continent not only seem but it is actually the most haunted region of the international community by the HIV/AIDS stigma and the effects have been much felt in the sub-Saharan region and hence the leading cause of death. Other infectious diseases such as malaria are still in the region competing on scale against the AIDS stigma but while lagging due to the fact that their cure or treatment has been at least identified and this is not the fact with AIDS.

However, scientific companies and the pharmaceuticals have invented drugs that can control the virus trend but these drugs have nothing to do with the elimination of the disease though they can prolong the life span of the victims by temporarily boosting the body immune system. The ARVs are a mimicking of failure in curing the AIDS virus because what they achieve is to keep the body producing the anti-viral antibodies that sustain a periodical immunity that had previously been destructured by the virus.

Little has been revealed to the public about the AIDS virus but one of the key facts is that the virus is dynamic in structure. Therefore, while in the host the AIDS virus keeps on restructuring instantly hence making it hard for the body immunity system to duplicate the actual related and effective anti-body as it has always been with most of the previous infectious diseases.

The infectious disease can certainly be regarded as some of the common human health affiliates because the world we live in is a great sea of microorganisms even worsening still is that they still circulate in sterilized environments hence bacteria will take long to be eliminated.

3. Part II

Principles in Basic Immunology and Inflammation

3.1 The Components of the Body Immune system

The common microorganisms that transmit or effect the prevalence of disease infection cannot be separated from the everyday environment hence the best way to achieve the prompt of minimizing disease spread is to devise scientific measures that are safe and applicable. The viruses, bacteria, fungi and parasites are the common wheels of infectious disease spread in the human physiology and leading to both less fatal and extremely fatal diseases contractions such as;

- Pneumonia
- Typhoid
- Streptococcal infection
- HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis

However, the natural immune system is designed structurally and physiologically to prevent the free intrusion and circulation of these pathogens in the living system and this is specifically carried out on two basic parameters i.e. destroying the foreign microorganisms and formation of the antibodies and the sensitized lymphocytes.

The mechanism of destroying the microorganisms is always the initial stage involving the detection of the foreign body or substance and after which immediate prevention mechanisms are undertaken by the leucocytes and the lymphocytes in eliminating, destroying or detoxifying it.

Formation of the immune anti-bodies serves to copy the structures of the pathogens by the body immune cells which after wards are capable of developing the resistant traits of blood components that will effectively engulf and completely eliminate the pathogens. The immune system is mainly supported by the blood circulatory and lymphatic system that harbors the cell factors used in the role of fighting foreign microorganisms essentially recognised ones include the following outlined in the table below;

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