MEASLES
Measles is a single stranded enveloped RNA virus surrounded by a protein coat, Genus: Morbilivirus, Family:Paramyxoviridae, it's host has always known to be human host cells and it's common infection in children also a very infectious disease. (See FIG.1)
Notice: you need to be aware of some of the Immune system's cells in order to understand some of the next questions.
It's TRANSMISSION
Measles is said to be one of the most infectious diseases( an airborne viral disease), it can be transmitted through several ways such as sneezing, coughing, measles can live for a couple of hours in the air which therefore can be transmitted through breathing and touching things contaminated with the virus.
DIAGNOSIS
Diagnosing measles virus can be performed through several ways such as: blood test, urine test or throat swab (see fig.2 to know what throat swab is)
Whom are most likely to be infected with measles?
-The elderly, very young individuals (can lead to their death), pregnant women, immunosuppressed individuals and those who are malnourished.
Mechanism of prevailing in our body.
Measles can enter our body through nose, mouth or eyes, measles is especially good at infecting our body's first line of defense within our lungs ( the beginning of infection) cells called Macrophages these cells exists all over our body and usually known as powerful eaters where they have the ability to devour foreign bodies up to 100 of them, it uses the macrophages' cell machinery and reproduce itself through the cells resources until the cell is full of viruses, they leave it and begins the cycle all over again. Fortunately, our immune system has some powerful immune cells called ''Natural killer cells'' these cells main job is to patrol the entire body and check other cells for infection, in case they find an infected cell they order it to commit a suicide through messenger proteins by a process called '' cell signaling''.
Measles symptoms usually are to be noticed after like 10 to 12 days ( Incubation period), after a period of time, macrophages alerts the BRAIN of the immune system ''Dendritic cells'', the dendritic cell's job is to collect samples of the intruders, travel to the lymph nodes and then activate the heavy weapons that erases the virus. Unfortunately, the measles virus uses such a mastermind or a dreadful tactic just like what is said in the video down below, it infects the dendritic cells and travel to lymph nodes and starts infecting your immune vault, the soldiers of your body "B & T lymphocytes), at last the lymph system spreads the virus everywhere infecting lots of organs and damaging many cells.
Now the symptoms of measles virus starts showing up, it infects various organs such as the spleen, intestines, liver, the lung, some cases infects the brain, etc..
Leading to a very high fever, headache, sickness, bronchitis, rash ( shows up at the beginning of infection sometimes) and much more..
The lymph system is weakened at the current moment making a chance for bacteria and other viruses that would take a chance of this and develop into secondary infections that can cause Pneumonia, at this stage our bodies are completely in an exhaustion giving an advantage of the virus to take over YET our body is far and away from giving up which is kind of a tremendous and fascinating thing to be proud of being a persistent and it fights back furiously, some of our dendritic cells survive long enough, they then activate our heavy weapons (T and B lymphocytes) B lymphocytes which then differentiate into ''Plasma cells'' that produces billions of antibodies a.k.a Immunoglobulins '' Y shaped tiny protein molecules that mark infected cells for destruction or clump the viruses, they consist of heavy chains and light chains'' T lymphocytes spread all over the body and kills infected cells.
About time now for our immune system to take a consideration of such disease by ordering some immune cells to save the specific type of antibody this virus needed to be obstructed and recognize the virus in case of it made a comeback.
IT'S CURE.
The best way to prevent measles is vaccination which became normally found in childhood vaccinations programmes, although some people cannot get vaccinations such as pregnant women, people who has immunosuppressions, chemotherapy patients or those who are diagnosed HIV-positive.
They does that by doing a process called ''Cell culture adaptation'' which allows the virus to reproduce in a medium that isn't human cells, this is done by injecting the virus in chicken embryos in a petri dish making the virus adapt to this type of infection ( chicken ) they are adapted to infect chicken cells since measles reproduces a lot they inject the individual with this virus which is weak comparable to human cells reproduces about 20 times this reduces the symptoms but activate immune response.
We can still are able to help find other ways to stop the disease from spreading for those people just like how we could make it with ''smallpox''
Thanks to Kurzgesagt, SciShow and Let's learn about bugs for making this easy to understand.
I don't own any of the following videos, they are only brought to help you understand brief notes about measles, so helpful and useful videos and I hope you guys find this informative.
Here are links to the YouTube channels I got these videos from:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZYTClx2T1of7BRZ86-8fow
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsXVk37bltHxD1rDPwtNM8Q
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSktYEB73WQ3mOOLyBfRsPA
Also thanks to http://www.who.int/immunization/diseases/measles/en/
Keep tunned for more biology-related topics!
FIG.1
FIG.2
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