Marie Curie was a famous French-Polish scientist known for her pioneering resear

Question

Marie Curie was a famous French-Polish scientist known for her pioneering research on radioactivity. Her work not only brought her fame but her death as well; she developed aplastic anemia due to radiation exposure. She experienced recurrent and prolonged infections (viral, bacterial, parasitic, and fungal). Explain why she suffered from recurrent infections. Be sure to mention the different types of WBC and the relation to the various infections, and the reasons why she lacked the cell-mediated and the humeral response. Be detailed in your explanation and support your answer with facts from your textbook, research, and articles from scholarly journals. In addition, remember to add references in APA format to your posts to avoid plagiarism.

Explanation / Answer

The effects of radiation exposure to the human body depends on duration of exposure and dose of exposure. The radiation causes damage to the developing cells and make human body more prone to infectious agents. The radiation exposure kills the white blood cells also. White blood cells are source of cell mediated immunity and humoral immunity. The different types of white blood cells are neutrophils, lymphocytes, basophils, eosinophils, monocytes etc. The white blood cells provide immunity to the body by different means and developing into different kinds. For example neutrophils and lymphocytes develop into the macrophages, which is involved in the killing of bacteria and viruses infecting the body. Due to loss of white blood cells because of radiation exposure, human body becomes more prone to infectious agents and loss of cell mediated immunity of the body. This makes the cause of recurrent infections to the body. Aplastic anemia is defined as the loss of different kinds of cells of the body like WBC, RBC, macrophages etc. The most important cause of aplastic anemia is radiation exposure. The recurrent infections and aplastic anemia may leads to death.

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