Question: What happens to our cells that can make us sick

Remsha Afzal answered on 11 Nov 2018: last edited 11 Nov 2018 3:00 pm

Hello! That’s a very good question to ask. 🙂
You see sickness or infection happens when viruses, bacteria, or other harmful microbes enter our body and begin to grow and multiply. And then we get a disease when the cells in our body are damaged because of that viral or bacterial infection. Our immune system gets the danger alert that there is an invader in our body and so to get rid of it, like soldiers, our white-blood cells of the immune system spring into action to try and kill the invader!
Viruses make us sick by killing cells or disrupting cell function. So then our bodies often respond with fever (heat inactivates many viruses), and produce a chemical called interferon (which blocks viruses from reproducing). The white blood cells can also function by activating the immune system’s ‘antibodies’ to target the invader. Many bacteria make us sick in the same way that viruses do, but they also have other tricks. Sometimes bacteria multiply so fast that they crowd out our body’s own cells and disrupt their normal function. Sometimes they make toxins that can paralyze our cells, destroy our cells’ energy-making machinery, or make our immune cells produce such a big reaction to killing the bacteria, that they accidentally also harm our body’s own cells.

If all else fails, a cell that is infected or damaged may commit suicide on its own by a process called apoptosis. So rather than have its neighboring cells suffer, a very damaged or diseased cell can kill itself from the inside to try to end the sickness. Scientists don’t yet understand fully how the cell switches to apoptosis, but research suggests it has to do with the build-up of too many damaged proteins inside the cell.
Interestingly, viruses can stop apoptosis from happening so they don’t let the infected cell in which they live in die! Other times they can increase apoptosis of certain cells like the immune cells so they die instead and leave our body vulnerable to attack by the invader. Balancing apoptosis is VERY important in our body. Too much or too little of it can lead to diseases like autoimmune diseases, neurological diseases and cancer.