Why does the immune system react in that way; what causes it to act irregularly when it shouldn’t?
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Well cytokines are in positive feedback loop where they latch onto rogue bandits to alert other WBCs to attack and then this attack causes more cytokines to be released which causes more WBCs to be attacked and produced which causes more cytokines… over and over again, the reason it acts this way is because it’s a simple way to make sure something happens, in this case the removal of a foreign invader
an easier explanation of positive feedback is contractions in pregnancy where pressure against the uterus causes a muscle contraction which in turn puts pressure on the uterus causing contractions over and over until the baby is out and no more pressure is there. When it works properly it’s great
We’re not completely clear as to why the body overreacts to certain things, anaphylaxis and deadly peanut allergies are also immune overreactions, but the main theories right now have to do with human genetics. There’s different kinds of cytokine storms caused by different things and a few of them, the more common ones, tend to occur because the WBCs that should kill a bacterium and release cytokines fail to kill and instead keep just doing the second half of releasing them
Anyways that’s my explanation someone might have some more specifics or better info tho!
The immune system components can’t text each other, they are too small to have cell phones. So, they communicate through chemicals. One chemical means “I’m in trouble, send help”. The reaction varies from person to person, this also how allergies work. However, the cytokine storm is a help message that gets too much response. This starts to cause damage, and the damage causes more calls for help. This is an example of positive feedback, and can be harmful to the person.
To explain a cytokine storm, the best analogy is war. Imagine a group of soldiers are trying to defend their country from an invading army. Yet, it’s clear that they are losing this battle. Panicking, they start to release every single robot super soldier they have. The robot super soldiers do take out some of the enemy, but since too many were released, they’ve also burned down every city and village in a thousand miles (which destroyed much of the country’s food and water supplies), and also killed thousands of civilians.
Now, imagine that you are the country, its cities and villages and food and water supplies are your major organs, the soldiers are your immune system, the robot super soldiers are cytokines, the civilians are other cells, and the invading army is whatever organism you’ve been infected with
Why this happens isn’t always entirely clear. Some people are genetically predisposed to having immune systems that overreact this way and there are also types of bacteria, viruses, and cancers that seem especially likely to provoke a cytokine storm. Ebola, for instance, seems to be able to briefly turn off the immune system’s warning system (the dendritic cells) and by the time the immune system realizes what’s happening, it may release a cytokine storm to try and gain the upper hand. (This, BTW, is what causes most of the bleeding in some Ebola patients.)
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