Immune response to infection

When a pathogenic (disease-causing) microorganism invades the body for the first time, the clinical (observable) response may range from nothing at all, through various degrees of nonspecific reactions, to specific infectious disease. Immunologically, however, there is always a response, the purpose of which is defense. If the defense is completely successful, there is no obvious bodily reaction; if it is partially successful, the affected person exhibits symptoms but recovers from an infectious disease; if unsuccessful, the person may be overwhelmed by the infectious process and die.

The two responses—the clinical and the immunologic—can be illustrated by the natural history of the disease poliomyelitis. When the virus of this disease enters the body for the first time, it multiplies in the throat and in the intestinal tract. In some people, it gets no farther; virus is shed to the outside from the throat and the bowel for a few weeks, and then the shedding ceases and the infection is over. The host, however, has responded and has developed circulating antibodies to a type of poliovirus. These antibodies are specific antipoliovirus proteins in the blood and body fluids that subsequently prevent disease should the poliovirus again be encountered. In addition, the infected individual develops an antipoliovirus response in a subset of white blood cells known as T cells. Antipoliovirus T cells persist throughout the individual’s lifetime.

In other people, the same process occurs but some virus also gets into the bloodstream, where it circulates for a short time before being eliminated. In a few individuals, the virus passes from the bloodstream into the central nervous system, where it circulates for a short time before being eliminated. Finally, in some individuals, the virus passes from the bloodstream into the central nervous system, where it may enter and destroy some of the nerve cells that control movement in the body and so cause paralysis. Such paralysis is the least-common result of infection with poliomyelitis virus; most infected persons have no symptoms at all. Those whose bloodstream contains virus often have a mild illness, consisting of no more than malaise, slight headache, and possibly a sore throat. This so-called minor illness of poliomyelitis is unlikely to be recognized except by those in close contact with someone later paralyzed by the disease.

If the nervous system becomes invaded by the virus, the infected person has a severe headache and other symptoms suggesting meningitis. Such persons are acutely ill, but most recover their normal health after about one week. Only a few of those with this type of infection have paralysis. Of all the people infected with poliomyelitis virus, not more than 1 in 100, possibly as few as 1 in 1,000, has paralysis, though paralysis is the dominant feature of the fully developed clinical picture of poliomyelitis. This poliomyelitis is actually an uncommon complication of poliovirus infection.

This wide range of response to the poliomyelitis virus is characteristic of most infections, though the proportions may vary. Influenza virus, for example, may cause symptoms ranging from a mild cold to a feverish illness, severe laryngitis (inflammation of the larynx, or voice box) or bronchitis, or an overwhelming and fatal pneumonia. The proportions of a population with these differing outcomes may vary from one epidemic to another. There is perhaps more uniformity of pattern in the operation of the defense mechanisms of the body, called the immune response.