Immune : how your body defends and protects you

Summary:

"Immune explores 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. We see what happens when the immune system turns on us, and how life is impossible without its protection. We learn how diseases try to evade the immune system and exploit its vulnerabilities, and we discover 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? In this book, Catherine Carver answers all of these compelling questions, and many more besides." --Publisher description.

Record details

ISBN: 9781472915115
ISBN: 1472915119
ISBN: 9781472915122
ISBN: 1472915127
Physical Description: 304 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm
Publisher: London : Bloomsbury Sigma, 2017.
Copyright: ©2017

Content descriptions

Bibliography, etc. Note:

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

Formatted Contents Note:

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.