Auto-immune diseases

"Auto" means "self". In an auto-immune disease, the body's defences fail to identify the "non-self" enemy, and attack the wrong cells, the wrong proteins. Instead of tagging and destroying a bacteria or a virus, the defence cells attack healthy tissue.

Some auto-immune diseases include Lupus, Psoriasis, and Wegener's Granulomatosis. Treatment can involve suppression the immune response. See what you can find on the web about these diseases.

When you are though, you might like to do the following exercise: make a list of the steps of the antibody immune response with which you are familiar. Then make a list of what can go wrong. You might also make a hypothesis is where the places most likely to "go wrong" are located.

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