What is the immune response to fungal infections

[sanj238]

What is the immune response? Is it humoral or is it cell mediated? Are eosinophils involved?

Are there exceptions? (like bacteria is humoral except for atypicals- chlam etc- cell mediated).

I read that parasitic infections primarily cause damage via host immunity and not from parasite itself- only its larav/eggs etc cause mass effect damage. Is this correct?

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[madchemist89]

The primary immune response to fungal infection is cell-mediated, I believe. Think about chronic mucocutaneous candidiasis as an example. With decreased IL-2 and IFN-gamma (which stimulates macrophages), there is a decreased cellular immune response.

For USMLE purposes, I do not believe that eosinophils are involved. Causes of eosinophilia are NAACP (neoplasm, Addison's, asthma/allergy, connective tissue disease, parasites (helminths)).

With the bacteria, the difference between chlamydia and most other pathogens is that chlamydia is an obligate intracellular, which will provoke a cell-mediated response, whereas extracellular pathogens provoke a humoral response.

Parasites usually have systems that allow them to evade host defense so that they can set up long term infection in the body.

 

[ketap]

hi, i believe u can have it here..http://www.idpublications.com/journals/PDFs/VII/VII_MostDown_2.pdf
CMI is the most efficient, but they believe Humoral is important too..