Encounters

 Week of 10/9/20

    Yesterday, I was here at home grading some lab reports from the Bio 140 nursing class. Their lab reports discussed on hematology, which is of course, the study of blood and their related diseases. It was more so like a cause study in which they were given background info of three different patients and they had to go ahead and decipher what disease was causing their symptoms. For one of the patients, the cause or illness was malaria. The woman had traveled outside of the country and had an increase neutrophils. As we learned in immunology class, neutrophils serve as the first line of defense. Therefore, an increase in neutrophils signals some form of infection. In addition, they function to heal damaged tissues. They also block, disable, digest, and ward off pathogens. These cells communicate with other immune cells to repair themselves and form a proper immune response against the pathogen at hand. As we know, neutrophils are called by cytokines and neutrophils themselves also release cytokines, which is what helps to amplify the effect of other immune response. These neutrophils contain toll-like receptors, which is what helps to recognize the pathogen. 

    Since the students are in biology for nursing, they did not really go into much detail as to why and how an infection leads to an increased neutrophil count, it reminded me of immunology as I wished they could've gone into more detail like we do in class. 

The structure of a neutrophil

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