Does our immune system not work with STDs? I am learning about our immune system and how our antibodies work. I don’t understand what happens in which we are able to get re-infected with certain infectious disease if we should have immunity. Im guessing our immune system just doesn’t work properly against these infections?
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You’re mostly talking about the difference between viruses and bacteria, which drives how our immune system has to respond.
Bacteria, which cause things like syphilis or gonorrhea or strep, are independently alive entities. As soon as they get into a part of our bodies they like, they start to eat and multiply. Your immune system has to kill them. Every time. They don’t like being killed and fight back (hence the existance of antibiotic resistance). You can keep getting re-infected as many times as the bacteria can get in you. It takes time for your body to see/recognize the infection and respond.
Viruses, on the other hand, use our own cells to reproduce. If they can’t get into our cells they can’t reproduce and we can’t get infected. Your body doesn’t kill viruses in the same way it kills bacteria, your immune system develops antibodies matched to a particular virus and, once it figures that out, that binds to the virus and inactivates it. Once that antibody is in your system it’ll bind to any matching virus that shows up…once you’ve had that first infection, your body can kill the virus very easily/quickly if it ever shows up again.
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