Reflection

Congratulations! You have reached the end of the Micro-Credential Course “Boost Your Immunity to Remain Healthy”. At the beginning of this course, you went through a quiz that tested your primary understanding of the body’s immune response. In case you did not do well on that quiz, now it is time to reflect on the same questions and see if you have improved your understanding of your body’s immune functions.

Let me bring you the questions here again with the right answers and explanations.

1. Diseases like diabetes, obesity, and high blood pressure can be transmitted through blood transfusion. Answer: False. Because, those diseases are called noninfectious diseases, i.e., not caused by bacteria or viruses hence can not be transmitted through blood transfusion.
2. Emotional stress can increase the risk of infectious diseases. Answer: True. Emotional stress can weaken our immune response functions hence we become vulnerable to infectious diseases.
3. Both bacteria and viruses are living organisms. Answer: Yes. This needs no explanation! However, viruses are different types of living organisms that need another living organism for their replication or multiplication.
4. Taking medicine is necessary when our immune system can’t function efficiently without medicine to treat a disease. Answer: True. This also needs no explanation!
5. Vaccines can prevent the entry of disease-causing viruses into our bodies. Answer: False. Vaccines can only activate our immune cells to produce antibodies against a specific pathogen such as the Corona Virus. Hence, a vaccine is useful only when the same pathogen enters the body.
6. Vaccines are used to treat a disease. Answer: False. See the explanation of the question number 5.
7. When a person is allergic to some food, it means that the person’s digestive system is not functioning properly Answer: False. Allergies are symptoms imbalance immune response. such as the production of allergic mediators by immune cells such as eosinophils.
8. Finding an effective drug to treat Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) is difficult because (A) the human immune deficiency virus (HIV) causing AIDS attacks cells that are responsible for fighting the disease. (B) HIV can escape immune surveillance by changing its properties. Answer: Both A and B. Yes, HIV can attack Th cells which are needed to activate B cells to produce antibodies against the virus. At the same time. the virus also changes its properties upon multiplication so that newly produced viruses can not be detected by the earlier sets of antibodies produced against their precursor generations of viruses.