Say you got some pathogen inside you, and it’s starting to replicate and your immune system isn’t prepped with the antibodies. Does it ever happen then that infection still gets nowhere because of reasons other than you consciously recognizing that you were exposed and taking some meds early on?
In: Biology
Antibodies & the B cells that produce them, alongside T cells, make up adaptive immunity. These are more or less like an extra powerful second line of defense that takes time to start paying off, because it must be generated in response to any specific pathogen (that’s the adaptive part).
The first line of defense, *innate* immunity, protects you from all sorts of threats pretty much all the time. Neutrophils & other granulocytes, macrophages, NK cells, complement proteins — these all do a great job right out of the box.
In fact, part of adaptive immunity is about better directing that innate firepower. Antibodies can neutralize on their own, but they can also recruit complement and many different cells to whatever they’ve bound. Helper T cells boost the activity of particular cells to suit the occasion, e.g. a Th1 cell activated by viral infection will boost macrophage activity among others.
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