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Immune : how your body defends and protects you / Catherine Carver.

by Carver, Catherine A.

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Bloomsbury Sigma, 2017.

Bloomsbury sigma series.

9781472915115 (hc.)

Alternate title:

How your body defends and protects you

304 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 285-295) and index.

Preface: Our hidden army -- Full frontal immunity: the first line of defence -- A cast of cut-throats: the killer cells that keep us safe -- Chit-chatting chemicals: how your immune system yells -- Transplants: designer vaginas to pig heart perfection -- Outnumbered: how the immune system manages the body's resident bacteria -- Immunological tango: sex and love -- What a cute parasite: pregnancy and the immune system -- A palace for parasites: worms and fleas and ticks! Oh my! -- The adaptive assassins: killing everything from pink-eye to plague -- Vaccines: a triumph of man's manipulation of the immune system -- Allergies: everything you're itching to know -- Auto-immunity: the science of friendly fire -- Defenceless: the boy who lived in a bubble -- Cancer: a deadly "spot the difference" -- Killer bugs: be afraid, be very afraid -- Clever drugs: immunological alchemy.

"The incredible arsenal that lives within us - how it knows what to attack and what to defend, and how it kills everything from the common cold virus to plague bacteria. What happens when the immune system turns on us, and how life is impossible without its protection. How diseases try to evade the immune system and exploit its vulnerabilities, and how scientists are designing new drugs to harness the power of the system to fight disease. Do transplants ever reject their new bodies? What is pus? How can your body make more antibodies than there are stars in our galaxy? Why is cancer so hard for our immune system to fight? Why do flu outbreaks cause a spike in sleep disorders? Can we smell someone else's immune system, and does that help us subconsciously decide who we fall in love with? Author Catherine Carver studied Medicine at the University of Aberdeen, which included time spent in Tanzania working with TB/HIV sufferers."--Provided by publisher.

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