| | Study Of Immunology
Immunology is both the study of the human immune system and the field of medicine that treats diseases of the immune system. If the WHO guesses wrong, and we are invaded by flus for which we have not received artificially induced immunities, a lot of people will come down with the flu.
. Since the immune system is so broad, encompassing everything from blood cells to skin, immunology is a very broad field of study. Immunity is the body's ability to resist a disease, and the immune system is a bodywide network of interacting systems: bone marrow, white blood cells, the entire lymph system and even the skin.
Arthritis and asthma are diseases of the immune system caused by the body's hypersensitivity to certain substances. Most of the disorders addressed by immunology are those in which the body's own immune system isn't sufficient to ward off disease, and the immune system must be supplemented with external assistance. One of the most intractable of immunology's problems today is a disease that attacks the immune system itself, AIDS, or Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome, caused by the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV). Every year, the World Health Organization (WHO) makes a highly educated guess at which, out of a large number of flu bugs, are likely to be in circulation in the coming year, and formulates the 'flu shot'. Since the immune system protects the entire body, AIDS leaves the entire body vulnerable and opportunistic infections can attack multiple body organs, severely weakening the patient.
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