Are antibodies needed for cell mediated response?

Question

I’m confused, because the definition of acquired immunity states:

‘ Exposure to pathogen triggers the 3rd line of defence to produce **antibodies** for that pathogen’

Doesn’t this definition kind of ‘disregard’ the immunity that develops in response to an intracellular pathogen (ie. when we need Tc Cells for cell mediated response)?

In: Biology

Answer 1

Simply: No.

Antibodies are made as part of the humoral response. They are not part of the cell mediated response, but they can be produced _as a result_ of the cell mediated response. They do help with the cell mediated response by ‘flagging’ things for destruction, but are not needed for it.

The reason they may be ‘disregarding’ the T cell immunity is because this T cell activation normally happens before B cell activation.

Basically cell mediated means ‘fought mostly by cells’ and humoral response means ‘fought with chemicals’. Cells being all manor of T cells and phagocytes, and chemicals being antibodies.