Chapter 21: Immune System Disorders

hypersensitivity: reactions to antigens that most people tolerate (autoimmune one’s own tissue, allergens:
environmental factors)

autoimmune disorders: failure of self-tolerance due to similar foreign antigen, breakdown in BTB, or change in
self-antigens

Severe combined immunodeficiency disease (SCID): genetic cause; scarcity of Bs and Ts; must live in a protective
environment

Acquired immune defivency syndrome (AIDS): HIV strikes helper- T cells; normally vulnerable pathogens cause major
infections ; transmitted through body fluids ; vaccines are ineffective because of rapid mutation in genome