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Asked by Lucas to Tom, Paul, Natasha, Ildiko, Ester, Eoin on 4 Nov 2017.
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Natasha Myhill answered on 4 Nov 2017:
Some people have an allergic reaction to insect venom (what is injected when you get stung by a bee or wasp). This means that their immune cells have an overreaction to the allergen (substance causing the reaction) that would not cause a big reaction in someone else. A bee sting normally causes redness and swelling at the site of the sting, and a lot of pain – that is a normal reaction. In some people an allergic reaction can cause a rash that spreads, difficulty breathing and low blood pressure. At the moment, scientists don’t know what causes different allergies in different people – it’s pretty random!
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Ester Gil Vazquez answered on 5 Nov 2017:
Our bodies have mechanisms to fight what comes from outside and is dangerous, like bacteria and viruses. It works as follows: if the body encounters something familiar, it overlooks it, but when it finds something weird it responds to it and attacks it just in case it may be dangerous. As a result, sometimes we end up attacking things that were completely harmless. That is what happens with allergies. In the specific case of bees, some people react to the substances that they inject when they sting us. This means that in addition to the sting, you have your own body trying to destroy the these substances and causing a bigger harm. Why do only some people have this problem? We don’t really know, but we think it may have to do with the genetics of each person and also with the way we train our bodies since we are born to recognise what is good and what is bad.
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Eoin McKinney answered on 6 Nov 2017:
A fantastic question! The honest answer is that no-one knows for certain (see how good the question is!), but we have some ideas….
Our immune systems have to cope with anything in our environment that might threaten us. It has developed a range of ‘weapons’ to help it do this. If it sees a threat, it attacks to remove the threat. Some ‘weapons’ act quietly behind the scenes – like when you’ve had a vaccination for ‘flu it can fight off the ‘flu virus and you’ll never even know it was there. Some responses are very strong and can make you feel unwell (if you get the ‘flu with a blocked up nose, its actually inflammation caused by your immune system making you feel blocked up). Sometimes the immune response is so strong it causes a disease – like an allergic reaction.
So an allergic reaction to a bee sting is your body fighting off a protein (bee venom) that it doesn’t recognise and thinks is a threat. Its fighting too hard and causing damage in the process.The really interesting (and unknown) part of the question is why we haven’t evolved to get rid of dangerous allergies and have a more balanced immune system. We think this comes down to big changes in our environment in the last few hundred years. We’ve been making our world cleaner – less rubbish, better public health systems and so we’re exposed to fewer germs. Our immune systems have evolved during a time when there were LOTS of bugs around – particularly some parasitic infections like worms that can live in your gut. Allergic responses are particularly useful for keeping gut worms under control and, in turn, gut worms try to suppress allergic responses to stay alive (all immunity is basically one big fight between us and bugs of one sort or another). Strong allergic responses used to be required to control worms that were defending themselves, now there are no worms to push back against the allergy and it causes disease more often. This is called the ‘hygiene hypothesis’. Some people are even trying to use worm infections to help control allergies and immune diseases.
So after all, there is a down side to being too clean: useful argument if you ever want to avoid taking a bath…! -
Paul McKeegan answered on 16 Nov 2017:
Great question and I can’t add much to those answers!
I am a fan of the hygiene hypothesis and I think my son is too by the way he eats stuff off the floor.
Comments
Lucas commented on :
Thanks