Instead of protecting us, the immune system can sometimes go awry, as in the case of autoimmune diseases and allergies. An LMU team has dissected how mast cells regulate their calcium levels to keep the immune response under control.
The immune system defends us against attack by viruses and bacteria and also helps to eliminate cancer cells. The innate immune system is responsible for the initial detection and destruction of invasive pathogens. It then alerts the cells of the adaptive immune system, which eliminates infectious organisms and provides long-term protection against them. There are situations, however, in which immune responses can be misdirected, causing the system to focus its firepower on the wrong targets – either the body’s own proteins (in the case of autoimmune diseases) or on intrinsically harmless foreign proteins (in the case of allergies). Now a team of researchers led by LMU immunopharmacologist Susanna Zierler and pharmacologist Ingrid Boekhoff from the Walther Straub Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology has now shown that the activity of certain ion-channel proteins in mast cells plays an important role in preventing allergic and anaphylactic reactions and ensuring that immune responses do not overshoot. Mast cells are found in practically all organs in the body and regulate the initiation and resolution of inflammatory reactions mounted by the immune system as a means of combating infections and metabolic dysregulation.
Read with interest, as I have Crohn's, where , as my Consultant described, my immune system had gone manic, read it a second time, the more we understand the better, would be nice if we could get to the point where we could recognise an immune system, just about to go manic + do something.
Or we didn't understand the functioning of the immune system at all. Immunology is filled with dogmas than science.
Didn't we all think that planets are running haywire before Kepler proved that they move in the elliptical path? Didn't the brightest minds of those days used 21 circles to predict the movement of the planet?
Keep your perspective open than blaming the immune system which works tirelessly to keep you alive
I imagine Sorrel Hippo is not blaming the immune system, merely passing on another observation about unstable immune systems. Immunosenescence is a factor of the ageing process linked with the immune system. Where does the dogma come into your perspective, Maverick2?
I am neither blaming him for his observation nor jumped in to force my view. I am responding to the original article with my perspective.
Once again we cannot move even one-bit in immunology without dogma
Immunosenescence is a dogma. the immune system works by chemistry and the chemical process does not vary with time. If that's the case our DNA might be degraded millions of years ago. Chemistry is sound enough to use the same enzyme of single cell organisms evolved billion years ago in humans.
The same IL-6, Adiponectin pathway is the marker of death at young age or the old age.
All I am asking is to be open to new ideas than believing that we know everything.
No one is asking you to be closed to new ideas, Maverick. Your anti-dogma feelings seem to be predicated on a very narrow front of a definition of the chemical PROCESS, which is correct in itself. I for one have no argument about this semantic particularism but only wish to point out that the immune system can be both innate and adaptive during ageing. Your dismissal of dogma is bordering on the ideological.
Dogma is ideological whereas science is logical. Dogma ignores the (new ideas) exception and science explores the exceptions. Dogma ignores non-smoker's lung disease whereas science explores the non-smoker's lung disease.
Von Neuman once said if you have unsolved problems, you have to look at the assumptions (dogmas) you made, the problems will solve by itself.
If you are not intended to explore new ideas when the entire world is at its heels, that's Dogma.
I am not dogmatic nor am I unwilling to explore new ideas. You put red herrings into our exchanges, straw men, Maverick. Your appeal to authority (Von Neuman) hardly furthers your case if you persist in wilfully misunderstanding me.. My ideas are always provisional and not rigid in describing the real world. Logic is not only the currency of science per se but also of philosophy, and the principle of charity in debate should apply.
If your volition is trying to cast me in some way, then it's succeeding. Von Neuman's idea is the core stone of science and you cleverly sidestepped it by deliberately trying to mislead as an appeal to the authority. Its called giving due credit to sire. As long as I am aware of the assumptions I make, I don't need to be provisional.
If I didn't understand the assumption I make, I have to conclude that the Immune system is hell-bent on destroying the 7 Billion population by stupid COVID-19 infection and wreck the life of 3 Billion chronic disease patient from the leftover.
At risk of prolonging this thread and bringing down the ire of HH moderators, I have to conclude Maverick that you are being doctrinaire and fixated on a goal to win at all costs. Isn't the true test of a scientific theory that it be testable and thus provisional? I haven't come across the phrase "giving due credit to sire" before. Is it an Americanism? You end your utterance by seeming to attribute agency to the immune system, which is fatuous. The principle of charity in debate allows me to think that you are merely joking and that this literary device is part of miss-attribution due to satire.
Take care and be safe in this awful pandemic my friend.
It seems the principle of charity in debate gives you a free hand to adjudicate the matter at your whims. As long as you are not traveling at relativistic velocity, the apple weighs the same in New York and London. It seems the name Immune system is a misnomer and millions of scientists are dimwit enough to use it. Literary merit may give you pyrrhic victory but only science will save from the pandemic.
Don't use immunosuppression as a tool to fight infection and stay safe.
The more we learn the more we realise how ignorant we are. I just hope that someday we can gain enough knowledge to treat these horrid diseases we suffer from and eliminate them so that we can live our lives pain free. Thanks for the update 2g x
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Mycophenolate instead of Perfinedine or Nintenanib? 
Hospitalised with covid, how long to get off oxygen and released?
Big thank you (bottle update)
Post-Covid lung issues - what to expect?
Recently diagnosed Asthma & COPD overlap…. Struggling with anxiety 
