Some Chronic Infections Give Host Resistance To Unrelated Microbes And Parasites

yerrag

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"Experimental animals that harbor chronic infections caused by intracellular microorganisms have enhanced resistance to infection with antigenically unrelated microbes and parasites, and to the growth of tumor cells. Mononuclear phagocytes mediate this resistance . Macrophages from these animals show enhanced ability to cause stasis and lysis of such microbes and tumor cells in vitro, and are termed activated macrophages. Although activities for antimicrobial and antitumour effects generally parallel each other, these functions sometimes diverge. Mononuclear phagocytes in their unactivated state can serve as reservoirs for a latent, persistent infection with organisms such as mycobacteria, fungi, protozoa, viruses, and certain bacteria. However, once activated, macrophages inhibit replication and kill most of these organisms. These antimicrobial effects are thought to be mediated by nitric oxide and to a lesser extent reactive oxygen species."

Clinical Hematology, Wintrobe, 5th Edition p.402

This is a good resource. I've been trying to learn more about blood, as I want to dwelve deeper into understanding the components in a CBC. It's very hard to get a good understanding from the snippets I get online. I still need a real book to get a fuller understanding.

I went into the Internet Archive (archive.org) and "borrowed" this book to view online. This was a 14-day loan. Still, this book would be better off viewed in print, as a reference. This is a fifth edition, printed in the 1960s, and can be bought used. It's already complicated enough, and it will do for my needs. Besides, the more recent a book is, the more it will be riddled with obfuscation by the current guardians of science.

I've been finding lately that I need to expand my understanding on how the body deals with infections, and CBC bloodwork data gives me a window into a good portion of my microbial health. For this, I find being able to interpret the CBC blood work to be very helpful. And having such a book as a reference is vital to this task.

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As someone who is dealing with low-grade infection in my blood vessels, in which my kidneys, at the very least are affected, and which presents as hypertension, I've wondered how despite my seemingly poor health, on the basis of my extreme hypertension (without any prescription medication in use to lower the pressure) I'm able to do quite well. With no flu nor fever in the past 20 years, and with no allergies for the past 2 years (after improving myself metabolically).

It's a big consolation to me that my low-grade infection (low grade meaning no fever) seems to be serving me well, at least keeping parasites from using my macrophages to hide in and inflict harm on me. The infection keeps my macrophages activated. In this way, it keeps the macrophage from being used by parasites. Perhaps it's why I'm not having problems with mosquitoes and the attendant malaria and dengue it comes with?

Funny though, in another thread I mentioned that my immunity has been helped by endotoxins, as the endotoxins also keeps my immune system at a state of alertness, that it is ready for a budding infection. Since the monocytes and macrophages are involved as well, it may just be that both bacterial infection and endotoxins are giving me a double dose of increased immunity.

No much of a good thing, I guess, can be a bad thing, after all.
 
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yerrag

yerrag

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The WBC value in CBC, when high, is a good indication. Standard of care, the basis used by doctors, uses 9 x10^9 as the max of range, but by Dr. Weatherby's standard, 7.5. But Dr. Tom Lewis considers values exceeding 6 to be suspect.

Especially when WBC is high, neutrophils exceeding 60% generally indicate a bacterial infection, and lymphocytes exceeding 44% indicate a viral infection in the wbc differential. This however, is a rule of thumb, as absolute values are also considered. Other wbc's such as monocytes, eosinophils, and basophils have to be considered to get a better picture.

Let me know if you're interested in Dr. Weatherby's cheat sheet so I can pm it to you.

By the way, mononuclear phagocytes refer to phagocytes from monocytes, as opposed to those from neutrophils.
 
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