Immunology

Question 2

What are the 2 most important rejection minimizing steps to prepare a patient for an organ transplant or transfusion? Why?

Answer 2

Blood typing and immunosuppresant drugs. Because without a donor with matching blood types AND a suppressed immune system, the recipients body will attack and destroy the foreign cells.

Question 3

What are the 4 main blood types?

Answer 3

A, B, AB, and O. Determined by whether you have the A antigen, B antigen, both, or neither. This is combined with an Rh factor classification system. (positive if you’ve got it, negative if you don’t) So, you get 8 specific blood types when you combine the 2 systems: A+, A-, B+, B-, AB+, AB-, O+, O-.

Question 4

What does Rh stand for in blood typing?

Answer 4

Rhesus, as in the monkey used in early blood typing experiments. The Rh factor protein system is the second most significant classification in blood typing for transfusions. The first is the ABO system.

Question 5

So, is it the letter O or the number 0 in the ABO blood typing system?

Answer 5

Either. The ABO system was orignally the ABC system. The O that eventually replaced C stands for the German word for zero. (Ohne)

Question 6

What do blood banks do?

Answer 6

Collect, process, test, separate and store blood. The testing part here is blood compatibility testing or antigen detection to determine blood type.

Question 7

True or False: There are only 8 specific types of blood.

Answer 7

False. There are 8 specific types in the ABO system, but there are more than 40 different human systems.

Question 8

What immune cells does HIV attack?

Answer 8

CD4 cells. These are helper T lymphocytes.