Fighting Againt Disease Flashcards
what are pathogens?
Microorganisms that enter the body and cause disease
what are the two main types of pathogen?
Bacteria and Viruses
what are bacteria and how do they work?
Bacteria are a very small cells which can reproduce rapidly inside your body and make you ill through damaging your cells and producing toxins
what are viruses and how do they work?
Viruses are not cells and are very small, they replicate by invading the cells and using them to produce copies of themselves until the cell bursts and releases the virus, the cell damage is what makes you feel ill
how does you body protect you against disease?
Yours skin, hair and mucus in your respiratory tract and exterior body stop any bacteria and viruses entering the system.
Platelets in the blood cause scabbing to stop bacteria and viruses from entering the blood stream through cuts and abrasions.
The immune system carries white blood cells to fight bacteria and viruses
what are the three ways in which white blood cells fight disease?
- Consuming them
- Producing antibodies
- Producing antitoxins
how do vaccinations work?
- Dead or inactive microbes are injected into a person/animal
- The white blood cells produce antibodies which fight of the disease
- If the microbes try to attack they are recognised and quickly attacked to prevent illness
what are the pros of vaccination?
- Vaccines have helped control lots of infectious diseases that were once common
- It can help prevent epidemics in countries if most people were vaccinated
what are the cons of vaccination?
- Vaccines don’t always work
2. You can sometime have a bad reaction to vaccines
what do drugs do?
Some drugs such as painkillers relieve the symptoms of disease whereas antibiotics actually kill the disease
why do bacteria sometimes become resistant to antibiotics?
Bacteria sometimes become resistant as there may be strands in the bacteria that are immune when those tat aren’t are killed only the immune can replicate producing an illness that cannot be treated by antibiotics
what did Semmelweis do?
Ignaz Semmelweis discovered that disease was being spread by bacteria on doctors hands by making basic hygiene mandatory and getting the doctors to wash their hands he decreased the death rate from 12% to 2%
what could be future problems of bacteria?
Bacteria can mutate to produce new strains, a new strain could be antibiotic resistance so current treatments can no longer work, or a new strain could be produced that no one has encountered before and an eperdemic may occur
what could be future problems of viruses?
Viruses mutate often meaning that it is very hard for vaccines to be created and infectious and deadly diseases could cause terrible fatality in a pandemic
