intro to course 2

Dr. Jenner was the first to use a cross-reacting vaccine to prevent a deadly illness, which he described in a paper published in 1796 that literally changed the world, and set the stage for the study of the immune response.

Is inflammation good, bad or both?

Antibodies: the most variable molecules in the universe!

T is for thymus

How does immunization work with the immune system?

What happens when the immune system doesn't work

Does our immune system have collaborators?

How does transplantation work?

Reflection on the content learned in week 1 and a peak into week 2!

In the 1950's people were beginning to say that the war on infectious disease was over thanks to antibiotics, but then reality set in: new diseases began to appear with increasing frequency. Antibiotic resistance became a problem.

We will look at fighting bacteria with antibiotics and what can happen when they aren't used well.

Antibiotics were a brilliant discovery in medicine. And we should be developing new ones, but the economics of doing that are not so favorable. And if we spread them around too much, we will select for bacteria that are resistant.

Often in western countries we don't think about diseases that are uncommon here. But we need to think about this one, because it is a cruel killer of children in poorer countries and we need to make greater efforts to control it.

You will be astonished to learn how many of the world's people are infected with this tough, difficult to treat bacterium. It helps us understand the importance of the immune response, in this case primarily the Th1 helper T cell.

The herpes virus family are not our friends. Some are cowards; they hide from the immune system in various cells, and come out again when our systems are stressed. At least two of them cause forms of cancer.

An Epidemic of Infectious Immunodeficiency

What infectious diseases are on the horizon? We've allowed several dreadful viruses to spread from wild animals to domestic ones, and people.

What do we know about the flu?

A deep dive into COVID-19, it's symptoms, diagnosis, and prevention protocols

Reflection on the content learned in week 2 and a glimpse of what's ahead in week 3!

The hippocampus is involved in developing new memories, and is one of very few places in the brain where new cells are made in adults. We have several different categories of memory which are introduced here.

"Neurons that fire together, wire together." That's the mantra for this Unit. We also like: The more we know, the more we can learn. What are the characteristics of the "life long learner"?

We begin to look at several serious and highly prevalent mood and thought disorders. Depression would seem to be something that's "just a really bad mood," but it is associated with significant changes in brain structure.

Like other disorders we've discussed, there are genetic and environmental determinants of bipolar disorders and schizophrenia. Bipolar is a mood disorder, and schizophrenia is mainly a thought disorder.

A spectrum disorder usually means that there are people with a very debilitating disease, and others with much milder symptoms who can, with help, function well in society.

This Unit addresses the way the brain develops in childhood, and suggests ways in which the fine tuning can be different in autism spectrum disorder.

The emotional and financial costs of caring for people with Alzheimer disease (AD) are staggering. As people live longer, the prevalence rises, and perhaps a third of all of us will develop AD if we live long enough.

We look at what it is, how it happens (there are two kinds of stroke) and what we can do to treat it.

Reflection on the content learned in week 3 and a glimpse of what's ahead in week 4!

Cancer can have different definitions depending on the level that is being studied: the entire tumor, the cells that it's made of, the chromosomes in those cells, and the genes within those chromosomes.

Cancer is often detected early because of a change in some part of the body, or other symptom like weight loss. We list some things to look for, and then survey the ways available to medical teams to make a diagnosis.

Cancer statistics are revealing about how cancer works. It's one of the top causes of death in the richer countries, but it seems to be largely a disease of development.

Cells aren't evil; they are just obeying Darwin's "survival of the fittest" observation—ones that are mutated to grow faster, spread more, and metastasize, will be selected to do so, pretty much like weeds.

Grading and staging also help the team decide on the best strategy for treatment. And just as important, it allows us to compare treatments over time.

The mainstays of cancer treatment are still the three oldest strategies: surgery, chemotherapy (drugs), and radiation. They all have strengths and weaknesses.

This Unit starts with the present and introduces the future. Targeted or rational therapy starts with the molecular identification of a tumor's mutations and designs drugs to counter the tumor-specific mechanism.

Here it is: we've seen quite a lot of evidence that cancer is in part a lifestyle disease. That means we can change our lifestyles and hope to change our chances of getting cancer.

You have finished the course! CONGRATS! Here is a reflection on this week and the overall course.