Immune System and Allergy Terms

A properly functioning immune response distinguishes harmful invaders from the body's own tissue, activating defenses that range from rapid to highly specific.

Defense rests on telling self from everything else, and its recognized failures run in both directions, too little response and too much.

The failure of the immune system to respond to an antigen that previously caused an immune response.

The immune system destroying its own platelets, leaving blood that clots poorly and skin that marks at the lightest knock.

Immunity is the body's capacity to resist a specific infectious agent, arising from prior exposure, vaccination, or the transfer of protective antibodies.

Immunization is the deliberate process of producing protective immunity against a specific infectious disease, most often achieved through vaccination.

Borrowing the immune system's precision to pick one molecule out of blood and measure how much is there.

Immunocompetence is the capacity of the immune system to recognize and respond effectively to infections and other foreign substances.

Having the ability to produce a normal immune response.

Not one condition but many, and which part of the defense is missing predicts which organisms end up causing trouble.

The inability of the body to produce an immune response.

Immunoglobulins are antibody proteins produced by immune cells to recognize and bind specific foreign targets such as bacteria, viruses, or toxins.

A substance used to help boost the immune response to a vaccine so that less vaccine is needed.

Immunology is the scientific study of the immune system, including how it defends against infection and contributes to allergic and autoimmune disease.

Change in the body's immune system, caused by agents that activate or suppress its function.

Reading the badges on a cell surface to work out what the cell is and whether a population came from one ancestor.

A substance that increases the ability of the immune system to fight infection and disease.

Immunosuppression is a reduced state of immune system activity that can be caused deliberately by treatment or by underlying disease.

Immunosuppressive describes a drug, therapy, or condition that reduces the activity of the body's immune system.

Therapy used to decrease the body's immune responses, such as drugs given to prevent transplant rejection.