strep throat
palmd | December 3, 2009He looked sick---really sick. He was sitting on a stretcher in an ER bay, flushed, breathing a bit quickly, but his youth seemed to compensate for the acuity of his illness, and he didn't feel nearly as bad has he looked. His fever was 104, his systolic blood pressure was in the 90s, his heart was racing. He'd had a sore throat recently, and rather than getting better started to feel weak, tired, and feverish. His mom finally dragged him in when he wouldn't stop shivering. His blood work was not normal, and his chest X-ray looked as if he'd inhaled a box full of cotton balls…
sporte | October 20, 2008What happens when a group of streptococci stick to cells in your throat and start to make toxins?
Your body fights back by making clones.
The animated video, Fighting Infection by Clonal Selection, from Etsuko Uno and Drew Berry is so good that if I didn't know better, I would almost think it's really capturing clonal selection on film.
What is clonal selection?
We call this process "clonal selection" because only some lucky cells get selected for cloning. These cells have proteins on their surface that are able bind to bits of stuff from bacteria or viruses. We call that stuff "antigens…