Plasma therapy has been proposed to treat covid-19. What is plasma therapy and what
connection it has with immunological memory? Kindly explain in detail.
Answers
Explanation:
whenever our body encounters a new antigen our immune system will develop antibodies to neutralize that antizen. and this information will stored in memory cells. if once again the same atigen encounter our body means our body will produce the adibodies suddenly and prevent us from getting affected by that anyigen. these antibodies will be present in plasma and produced by b-lymphocytes. so the plasma from a corona affcted person will have antibodies to neutralize antizens produced by c virus. so you can take that plasma and give it to other infected person. but it is not working properly in case of corona.
The convalescent plasma therapy aims at using antibodies from the blood of a recovered Covid-19 patient to treat those critically affected by the virus. The therapy can also used to immunise those at a high risk of contracting the virus -- such as health workers, families of patients and other high-risk contacts.
Immunological memory is a unique property of the immune system as it can “store” information about a stimulus and can mount an effective response when the stimulus is encountered again. This response – a secondary immune response – is quicker and stronger than the primary response. It takes a smaller stimulus to trigger a secondary response and, what is more, it occurs even after many years since the first exposure. Immunological memory is an important mechanism that protects the organism from bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites. It plays a significant role in understanding autoimmune diseases and is one of the decisive factors of successful treatment in transplantology. It is also crucial in vaccine therapy. The secondary immune response is dependent on many subpopulations of memory cells within T and B lymphocytes and natural killer cell .