Why does our body reject other people’s donated organs and require immunosuppressants to be taken but getting someone else’s blood is ok?
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Every cell has markers (antigens) on it. Blood cells have very few of these markers on them. Each blood type has a different set of markers. If you have one blood type, then your body’s immune system has attacker cells that can identify the markers on the other blood types but don’t identify the markers of your blood type.
So if you’re A, you have A markers on your blood cells, and your immune system has attacker cells that identify B markers but not A. The donated blood is also very short-lived.
All our cells have these markers. When you get to organs, there are so many different types of cells, and so there are billions of these markers. Our immune system knows the markers on our cells. But they identify the markers on the donated organ as different and attack it. Donated organs are meant to last very long. Up to decades if possible. We don’t want the body to attack a donated organ, so we suppress the body’s immune system.
** This is a very, very, very basic version of an extremely complex topic, but the basic idea is the same **
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