Article: Tissues, not blood, are where immune cells function

[Andy]

"Early in the pandemic, my team spotted something surprising. When people were severely ill with COVID-19 and on a ventilator, the daily rinses of the plastic tubes in their windpipes contained immune cells from the airway. More surprisingly, what was in these airway samples was very different from what was found in the same patient’s blood.

The airway cells were producing high levels of cytokines — factors that recruit immune cells such as T cells to a tissue site and promote inflammation. By contrast, the corresponding blood samples were low in T cells, but high in other immune cells called monocytes, which were displaying unusual patterns of cell-surface receptors. Lung samples from patients who had died showed monocytes and a further type of immune cell (macrophages) clustered in the lung’s tiny air sacs; this is associated with the damage that typifies severe COVID-19. The unusual receptors suggested to us that monocytes circulating in the blood had been both altered and summoned by the cytokines produced in the airway1. Had we not collected both airway and blood samples, we would not have put these pieces together.

As this example shows, the pandemic has revealed major gaps in our understanding of the human immune system. One of the biggest is the reactions in tissues — at sites of infection and where disease manifests."

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01396-y

 

[Jonathan Edwards]

Yeah, well, I agree with the title.

Not sure that reactions in tissues is a gap in understanding. It was the stock in trade of proper immunology for decades - but maybe people have lost sight of that!

 

[Creekside]

As this example shows, the pandemic has revealed major gaps in our understanding of the human immune system.

I almost expect a paper to come out revealing yet another, separate, immune system in our bodies, that no one had noticed before. They keep finding new organs, new lymph channels and other new--and important--bits of our bodies, so maybe they'll discover that RBCs engulf pathogens, or that endothelial cells shoot out harpoons at passing bacteria.

 

[DokaGirl]

Good point in the article: that not all is known about the immune system.

The arrogance of some others who assume if we can't find what's wrong with you, you must have some form of psychological problem. After all, they know all there is to know about medicine. "There's nothing left to discover."

 

[DokaGirl]

Not sure I get your point about self-evidently not true.

My point was these people have dismissed any possibility of say in our instance, ME being biomedical, in favor of the BPS model.

This article about the researchers' immune system discovery, and needing to know more, in my mind shows scientific curiosity. When others just plug pwME into the psych bailwick, they are tragically missing the point.

Maybe my quotation marks and sarcasm were confusing.