Viruses use our cells only to replicate themselves. So why do different species of viruses affect us differently or have unique / different effects?

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Was wondering if maybe they don’t cause any specifically unique harms and what emerges as different effects or illnesses merely come down to which specific cells they takeover and the speed in which they do it.

In other words the death of cells in reality cause illness. (Along with activity and overreaction by our immune system?)… So for example, if something else (e.g. poison) killed the same cells, then would the results might be the same as a virus destroying those cells?

In: Biology

2 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

There are so many different kinds of viruses! Viruses usually hook up with something on the surface of cells and use that to get into the cells. Different viruses pick different surface targets, so different viruses enter different cells in different organs. Some viruses are more promiscuous than others!

On top of that, different viruses can cause different amounts or kinds of damage. For example, rhinovirus seems to cause almost no large scale damage to your body — almost everything that happens in a cold is your immune system reacting to the rhinovirus during the ‘common cold’. That is different from influenza, which actually can kill a lot of cells and cause damage, even though they both hit your respiratory system. So some viruses don’t kill a lot of cells, and others kill a ton of cells!

Factor in that your immune system can react different ways to damage and pathogens, with different kinds and degrees of immune response. So in the case of your example, taking a poison that kills the same cells, my answer would be that the effect to your body would not be like a viral infection targeting those cells. That is because the immune response to cell death (without a detectable pathogen around) is different than when there is a pathogen detected!

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